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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."
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.
Myth TV anyone?
Creative Demolition
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.
From the somabody-neads-to-chack-thair-spalling dept.
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".
I have a standalone tivo with tivo2go software and it is pretty neat. I really like the tivo interface, season passes....all works well. As I moved and dropped directv, I added comcast cable since they are also my ISP. I got a promotion for htdv and their new Motorola 6412 DVR. That box does record HD and supports dual recording via single coax cable connection. But the user interface and other tivo like features are not near as nice, plus the box seems to freeze up every so often (even when not recording). The thing that makes me appreciate my tivo is that I haven't seen tivo prevent me from recording or fast forwarding through a show. There are reports that comcast is doing just that, although I have not experienced it for myself.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I've got one of these, and it does everything that the article mentions lacking in the products he used. I'm not sure if it goes weeks into the future with the guide, I've never tried. Oh, one thing it does not have is 30sec skip, but it has 3 or 4 levels of fast forward, and it accounts for human reaction time when hitting play. I always get exactly to the end of a commercial break, sometimes I get the last 5 or 10 secs of the commercial.
It has all of the Season Pass features of a Tivo, and all in all its a great device, plus its HD. Oh, it also has two tuners so I can watch and record a show at the same time. The equivalent media PC would cost much more than I pay for this device, and not be as good. A Tivo is close, but no HD. I was pleasantly surprised with this device.
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.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I've always heard that TiVo can fast forward through adverts, but I don't see how - unless you pre-record everything.
That is pretty much what you do. I don't have a Tivo. I use another PVR. I don't have time to watch the shows I schedule it to record, let alone something else that is on. If I do, however, I just tune in 10-20 minutes after the show starts and watch it from the buffer. I start at the beginning, skip all the commercials, and it ends the same time as it normally would.
Microsoft owns a big chunk of Comcast.
--
make install -not war
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.
--
make install -not war
You either have to be watching something already recorded - or start watching something a few minutes after it's already started (rewind to the start of show... and ffwd through commercials)...
BlackNova Traders
Zoneminder is great, it even has a live CD so you can find out how your hardware will work without having to find a drive to install it on.
I've been using it for about a year and am very happy with it.
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.
Here's one source
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
My mom surprised me one day saying she ordered the HD DVR from Comcast (which runs Microsoft software). It is like $5/month or something like that, and there was no up front purchase. I was horrified, someone between those two companies could be nothing less than spawn of the devil. Well, as usual, the installation experience was bad (I've never had a good install from Comcast), because their software servers were having problems and it took a few hours to download the software. After that, however, I was amazed at how much better it was than I expected. The interface is nothing to call home about, but at least it loads and moves pretty fast. The thing that impressed me the most was the HDTV recording ability. You are able to record two HD streams and watch another at the same time! I tried scrubbing through some HD shows we recorded and it was smooth at any speed I tried, it fast forwarded better than any digital content I have seen and even VHS tapes... and this was high definition content.
Another that I appreciate is that it doesn't put ads on screen when you pause video, you can see exactly what you want to. It also doesn't assume what you are interested in and try recording shows it thinks you would like. 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. Not only does it take more time to scroll, but I have also tried recording shows that are on a channel we don't get. Since it doesn't know better, it silently tries to record it, yet nothing shows up. It would be nice if it could give us a warning. I have yet to see a show we weren't able to record (although, if it starts happening when the broadcast flag comes out, I'll have my parents return it).
Last Sunday I set it to record the Oscars, and then I fast forwarded through at super speed and just watched the good parts. That was very handy.
It also has firewire output, but I have yet to try transferring the shows to my PowerBook (using a utility that saves HD streams from firewire). I'd really like to do this so I can save all the IMAX movies on the INHD channels for a long period of time.
Andrew
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.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
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.
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.
...is my Tivo!
/.er's comment)
(not my joke. repeating another
Turn off your television, read a book. TV is for schmoes. ;-)
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
... over Tivo. We bought an UltimateTV reciever from Radio Shack (*gasp!*) about five years ago. Since then, my wife's mom upgraded from a basic DirecTV unit to a DirecTivo unit, and we have had plenty of time to use it, and we were so frustrated by the Tivo's limitations that we immediately went on eBay and bought a couple more used UTV units for spare parts and backup units. While not as hackable as a Tivo (you can upgrade the hard drive), the basic functionality is equal to a Tivo, the guide appears and scrolls far faster, the 30-second skip works perfectly, it's got the predictive resume everyone has been raving about in this discussion, and we actually like the fact it does NOT guess what we want to watch and fill up our hard drive unless we ask it to do so. And oh, yes, it does allow us to specify not to record duplicates, etc. One big plus - the Tivo's max fast forward speed only seems to be about 8x real time. The UTV will do 300x fast forward and rewind.
Unfortunately, nobody sells these units new anymore; apparently Microsoft decided to put its eggs in the MCE basket instead.
We looked at the HDTV version of the DirecTivo, and it was even worse than the basic DirecTivo.
We won't be able to use the UTV boxen with HDTV, but then we don't watch TV so much that it really bothers us, and besides we are too far from a major market to get over-the-air HDTV anyway.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
cable box DVR is cheapest 5-10 a month, no up front
tivo is cheap in the short run. $100 up front plus 12.95 a month
MSFT media PC expensive $500+ up front. cheapest HP mcpc = $549 plus shipping, no ongoing cost for programming guide.
Myth TV sw no cost, hw expensive up front similar $500+ for computer, no ongoing fee.
Well if you search the forum, you'll see that I recommend an nvidia geforce 440 or above. I've used one in each of my boxens without issue for well over a year.
Regards,
cesman
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
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.
You won't be able to transfer those shows.
There's a little thing called 5C or HDCP protection that flags shows as "copy once", "copy never", or "copy always". Unless the show is "copy always", the set top box will refuse to unencrypt the show for your Mac. It will only send them to an "approved" recording device like a HD-DVR that will them store them as "copy never". Think there will ever be an "approved" recording program or card for a PC/Mac? Nope. Never.
The only channels that are usually copy always are the "must carry" over the air networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc. INHD will probably be "copy once" in your area (it is in my area).
5C is similar in function to the broadcast flag. You're getting a sneak preview of what the broadcast flag will mean.
The broadcast flag is slightly different in that it involves the FCC. But the 5C racket already has the US government providing muscle with the DCMA (illegal to circumvent the encryption).
-Ryan C.
From the article:
"Multiple tuners. Again, TiVo gives you one tuner per box, unless you're willing to pony up for the pricey DirecTiVo solution."
My DirectTVTivo Box has 2 Tuners, paid $99 for it, for 70 hours of Programming, no extra costs at all. Just needed to run a co-axial like from the Dish.
Moronic indeed.
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.
Face it, do something enough times, and it can cause problems.
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