Slashdot Mirror
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.
Microsoft owns a big chunk of Comcast.
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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.
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make install -not war
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.
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.