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 still prefer to pay TiVo.

[garcia]

Smart offers. If you bail out of watching a recorded show within a few minutes of the end, TiVo asks if you want to delete the recording to free up hard drive space. That's smart; it's assuming that since you're near the end, you've probably watched all you intend to watch. (If you cancel playback in the middle or beginning, though, TiVo doesn't bother you with that offer; it assumes you're not finished with the show yet.)

I don't know if they were talking negatively about the lack of an option to delete if you bail out in the middle of playback or not but, honestly, it's not difficult to delete any recording from the main menu... For most of the shows I watch I have them setup to delete when space is needed. The shows that I absolutely MUST watch get watched or marked later with "do not delete until I say".

I would actually find it relatively annoying if I jumped out of playback in the middle of a show and it asked if I wanted to delete. That's an unnecessary step that I'd have to take.

That's my opinion though, YMMV, perhaps a more detailed configuration of these settings would help TiVo? "Do you want to be prompted to delete if aborting playback before the end?" (something less wordy but you get the idea).

Bottom line? Feature for feature, Windows XP Media Center Edition matches TiVo and even exceeds it in some measures.

Bottom line? You need to have a dedicated machine for the MCE and a TV in/out card plus you need something that's half-decent in speed. TiVo just works and it was cheap (for me). You also need to support Microsoft and personally, as much as I am not terribly happy w/TiVo's recent decisions, I'd prefer to pay them than MSFT.

How Tivo can win...

[radiumhahn]

I honestly believe that if Tivo wants to win they should allow shell access to the box and release development APIs so people can write their own Tivo applications. This will allow third party companies to create and support Tivo solutions and would bring popularity back to the device. If you hack a cable box you get a visit from the FBI. Microsoft will never be open. This is where Tivo can win. Hopefully they wake up and sieze the opportunity.

Re:How Tivo can win...

[riptide_dot]

I honestly believe that if Tivo wants to win they should allow shell access to the box and release development APIs so people can write their own Tivo applications.

I couldn't agree more. To add to that idea, one of the main reasons that I "hacked" my DirecTivo was because I needed to implement features in it that weren't at all available in the OOTB unit (specifically the network interface and a webserver).

Here's a pretty specific example of why it was good for me to be able to modify this device: I have an entertainment center with doors on it that are completely opaque (meaning that if the doors are closed I can't get IR to the components behind them). So, instead of modifying the layout of my media center, I wrote a script that will allow me to change the channel on the Tivo (and actually do just about everything the remote can do) using a web interface on my computer (which has its IR receiver extended into the outside of the entertainment center). The computer's remote and accompanying software can then translate its commands into web scripts that are then in turn fed directly to my hacked Tivo via its webserver. There is no way I could have done any of this on an OOTB unit.

I suppose I could have done this with a third-party IR repeater, but this was more fun, and more importantly, FREE.

I suggest that Tivo, MS, and other DVR manufacturers could still market their "closed" versions for the masses of people who are willing to sacrifice feature sets for simplicity, but they should also offer more powerful units to those that want to purchase them, maybe provided that the "power" units have less of a support expectation...