Tivo HD Released Into the Wild

B.Gud writes "Tivo has launched the new 'Tivo HD' DVR, validating what was learned from retailer leaks last week. The new unit is available for orders and will ship in early August, but the good news is that Tivo is going to activate serial ATA later this year, and that TivoToGo support is coming as well. From the article: 'Suffice it to say that it's the machine we thought it was, loaded with dual tuners, support for two CableCARDs (or one MCard!), a 160GB drive (180 hours recording SD, 20 hours HD), and HDMI. It really makes the Series 3 look weak. Or put another way, it makes the Series 3 into the boutique device it really is.'"

Comments

why buy when I can rent?

[cavtroop]

...or, I can rent an HD DVR from my cable company for the same price Tivo charges per month, with no huge outlay of cash in the beginning. Sure, the experience isn't quite as good, but its more than adequate. And if it dies, I get a replacement, no questions asked.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[the.nourse.god]

Which is why I think Tivo should forge more partnerships like the ones they have made in the past with DirecTV and now Comcast. The content providers will subsidize the hardware and Tivo will gain more profits from market segments they couldn't reach before. Most consumers will think along the same lines as the parent - "Why pay $600 up front and a monthly fee when I can get the same thing from the cable/satellite provider for just the monthly fee?" Tivo will always have its fans, but for me the added functionality a Tivo box would give me over DirecTV's new box doesn't justify the extra cost.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[link-error]

    I pay TimeWarner $13/month to rent a HD-DVR box, and it sucks so bad I want to just shoot it. It doesn't record programs that it should, it is always locking up for MINUTES at a time, and the user interface is horrible to find shows, etc.

    For $300 fee plus up-front fee, with similar monthly costs is a no brainer for me.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your provider must not be Comcast. Their DVRs suck. How about pressing FF, seeing no change for 5 seconds, then get 10+ seconds of FF that you cannot break out of? You mash the buttons five or six (or ten. or twenty) times and nothing happens. Then, since they were dutifully queued, you may be rewarded with a series of rewinds, fast forwards, etc until the whole thing catches up, invariably leaving you anywhere but where you desired.

Count me as an eager Tivo customer once these new boxes become available.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[cayenne8]

I'm wondering if they'll offer to allow you to transfer your lifetime subscription over to this new HD Tivo? I'd not likely every buy another one of their products since they don't offer lifetime sub's any longer.

But, if they'd let me transfer over...I'd consider it!!

I wonder if you can get recorded content off this new tivo, and 'decode' it so you can burn it onto a dvd with no DRM?

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[the_tsi]

Why have sex when you can masturbate? They have the same result, right?

Anyone who's used a brand-name TiVo for more than a few hours will be disgusted by all the DVRs from cable and satellite companies (and MythTV for that matter). TiVo has, for the most part, done DVR *right*.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like, "Why have sex with your regular partner when you can pay for a prostitute?" Some people don't want to pay extra for a "pro."

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[AaronBaker2000]

The difference between a Comcast DVR and TiVo is like the difference between Windows Moblie and the iPhone. One of them is impossible for normal human beings to use, while the other sets new standards for interface design.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Lord Ender]

Tivo gives customers what customers want (with some compromises). Cable Co DVRs give customers what the Cable Co wants.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

doubtful. the lifetime subscriptions, at least a few years ago, were for the lifetime of the box--not the user.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[jargoone]

They might . There have been several instances of "limited time" offers to transfer lifetime service. Last year there was one to transfer to the Series 3, and there's one right now to transfer to the Series 2 dual-tuner.

The TiVo HD is eligible for the multi-service discount, so I'll be all over this.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[kevinl]

Tivo has offered transfer deals in the past, but there isn't an option to transfer your lifetime service to Tivo HD right now.
They do offer a multi-service discount of $6.00/month off whichever monthly plan you choose. With the MSD, the monthly fee is only $6.95 for a 3 year commitment. That's a bit cheaper than the $299 prepaid 3-year plan.

I already placed my order...

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[isaac]

If Tivo really gave customers what they wanted, they wouldn't be collecting and selling clickstreams, they wouldn't be pushing ads into the UI, they'd have a 30-second skip (without a hack) and auto commercial skipping.

They offer only a shinier UI. Functionality and privacy-wise, they're every bit as bad as the cablecos.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[oni]

When the Series 3's came out last year there was a window - until January 07 I think - where you could transfer a lifetime service. That was the only reason I bought a series 3. I had a lifetime service on a Series 1 that died (I broke it by modding it)

They've added some neat features. You can subscribe to podcasts. They recently added what I think are video podcasts, but I'm not exactly sure. I watched some show by John Dvorak where he interviewed the Digg people. It can stream MP3s, so you don't need a seperate box for that. You can rent movies through amazon.com for $1.99. Once you hit the play button it keeps them around for 24 hours then deletes them, but that's still more convenient than netflix.

I have a series 2 also and it can transfer shows over the network, so I can keep every episode of BSG and a bunch of movies and such. That's very cool, except for the fact that the transfer rate is slow. You have to wait an hour for enough of a 2 hour movie to transfer so that you can start watching. And anyway, they haven't turned that feature on for the series 3's, though the article above claims "it's coming." We'll see.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not sure that I would buy one and pay subscription though. But if you can get the lifetime deal then go for it.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[tji]

That's up to the cable company. I don't know if this has happened yet, but last year Comcast and Tivo came to an agreement to provide STB for comcast customers.

I think the main issue comes down to the provider giving up a portion of the $$. DirecTV used to have Tivo boxes as an option, but they are phasing them out in favor of their own box, for which they can keep 100% of the revenue (and not require an additional monthly fee for their customers, such as Tivo requires).

Charter uses the Moxi DVR box, comcast previously (still?) used a crappy DVR from motorola.

And, you've always got MythTV.. roll your own.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[HTH NE1]

doubtful. the lifetime subscriptions, at least a few years ago, were for the lifetime of the box--not the user. They still occasionally offer the ability to transfer lifetime service from one box to another. I think they have such an offer running right now, though when I saw it it was for a new dual-tuner Series2, not the Series3, and unless its from a grandfathered Series1, it has always been a transfer to a new unit, not one you already own.

I've transfered lifetime service from non-grandfathered Series1 units to Series2 units through such an offer. It made sense as the Series1 units don't even require service, so I could drop service from them and still use them for manual timed records, which the Series2 and newer units do not allow without service.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens to me too, now and again (Comcast). Not often enough to make me care, but it's frustrating at the time.

One thing would be nice on these things: ability to finish recording sporting events that run over time. I purposely record an hour or more over on most events in case they go on longer than the scheduled time.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[BLKMGK]

I don't care if they report my clicks anonymously, I've never seen an ad pushed into the UI, and I can get 30 second skip by pressing a few buttons - hardly a hack. It records what I want when I want it, allows me Season Passes that work even when a shows changes time slots, and the UI is simple enough for even strangers to use. Stop posting FUD.

Yup, a shinier useful UI that works as expected unlike so many others with no work - just like the appliance it is. I have mine rebooted about once every 6months if that too.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[HTH NE1]

I have a series 2 also and it can transfer shows over the network, so I can keep every episode of BSG and a bunch of movies and such. That's very cool, except for the fact that the transfer rate is slow. You have to wait an hour for enough of a 2 hour movie to transfer so that you can start watching.

At lot depends on what you're transferring. If I've recorded downconverted HD Star Trek, it is all-boxed (letterboxed and pillarboxed), and when transferred it finishes well before I'm done watching it. Recorded over S-Video, the bars are completely black and compress very well with the variable bit-rate (VBR) recording the TiVo uses.

While the Series3 doesn't have to use USB-Ethernet adapters, any speed benefits of the Series3 dedicated Ethernet port will likely be curtailed by the adapters of any Series2 units sharing with it. I've also seen 30-minute podcasts take well over an hour to transfer, and you don't have the option to play them until they're finished.

Crankygeeks and DL.TV are recent new offerings to TiVos. So far, all podcasts are limited to storing at most 10 episodes and cannot be transferred to other TiVos, VCRs, or DVDs, possibly due to viewer tracking requirements for billing the podcasters.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[dmpyron]

My TW SA8000 hasn't given me a problem in months. And when we finally clear out all the programs currently recorded on it, I'll trade it in for an 8300. Which has supported eSATA for quite a while. I have one friend with a 300 GB drive, another with a 750 GB drive. She says that a) they can go on vacation for two weeks and b) you still have to delete, or the recorded list gets crazy long.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[That's Unpossible!]

If this were true, then you would expect TiVo boxes to outsell Cable company rental boxes -- but they don't.

TiVo has a few features that I would like to have, but it also has costs that outweigh the benefits to me. In my area, TiVo is competing against the cable company's DVR, which is so-so, DirectTV's new non-tivo DVR (which blows goats), and Dish Network's DVR -- which is very good.

And the huge advantage all 3 of those have is the great integration with the service itself. No re-encoding of signals, etc. The guide is built in to the service. Cheaper monthly fees, even.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

If TiVo didn't do these things to placate the media companies, there wouldn't be a TiVo much longer. They would be sued out of business. TiVo has to walk a dangerous line between what's best for the customers and what keeps them out of danger with the media companies.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[HTH NE1]

they'd have a 30-second skip (without a hack) I wouldn't call it a "hack". It's more like a backdoor, easter-egg, or undocumented feature. The only problems are (1) they don't market it and (2) it has to be reset if power is lost (UPS) or the unit otherwise reboots.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Orange Crush]

I'm wondering if they'll offer to allow you to transfer your lifetime subscription over to this new HD Tivo?

I believe the "lifetime" they were referring to when offering those subscriptions was the "lifetime" of the box itself, so I doubt they'll allow you to transfer.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Johnboi Waltune]

It can stream MP3's from another computer on my network? Can it stream video -- DivX/XviD AVI's? If it can't, that's a dealbreaker for me.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[eudaemon]

Because the Tivo platform is according to most people much more reliable and featureful
than the Scientific Atlantic / Motorola offerings from cable providers.

I would prefer to purchase something that does what I want than rent something doesn't.

Better still would be for CableLabs to loosen the restrictions on their CableCard devices
such that so-inclined consumers or OEMS could build Linux or Microsoft Media Center devices.
Nothing against TIVO, per se but those other platforms can offer even more features than Tivo.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[eudaemon]

Correction: that should real SMALL OEMS... i.e. local mom and pop integrators, not just Dell, Alienware, etc.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Binkleyz]

For whatever it's worth, I have it on very good authority (although, as slashdotters, I assume you will dismiss this claim out of hand..) that they're already using Tivo-branded DVRs in New Hampshire (as a test market).. I have this information directly from the mouth of a woman that works for Comcast (on the DVR project) here in PA.

At the moment, I have the Comcast DVR that I assume you're talking about above (silver, with a yellow LED display), and yes, it truly sucks. More annoying (to me, anyway) than the Fast-Forward thing you're talking about above is the fact that there is no apparent way to set up a "series recording" that will only record shows on a certain day of the week or time of day. I don't need three versions of the same damn show, but since any new show (in other words, not a repeat from days or weeks before) gets recorded, this is exactly what happens... I switched over from my ReplayTV (I have an old old one, a 4160, with a 320 GB replacement drive) to allow for HDTV and dual-tuners, but I sometimes seriously regret doing it.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[jhsiao]

The offer to transfer lifetime service to a Series 2 just expired yesterday.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Stamen]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one suffering while using Comcast's oh so lame DVR (Dynamic Variable Replay). It's like playing roulette with your remote, "fast forward, come on fast forward.... I'd really like it to fast forward......clink, whiz, whirl........pause, stop, fast forward.....rewind, doh!"

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[isaac]

I don't care if they report my clicks anonymously,

Good for you. I do. I also object that they collect and store my clicks non-anonymously.

I've never seen an ad pushed into the UI

Got a series 1, I guess?

I can get 30 second skip by pressing a few buttons - hardly a hack

I'd love to see the page in the manual documenting this. Oh, wait...

It records what I want when I want it, allows me Season Passes that work even when a shows changes time slots, and the UI is simple enough for even strangers to use.

Even my shitty iguide-based cable co dvr meets this bar.

Stop posting FUD.

Get bent.

-Isaac

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe sex can also produce another organism, as well as an orgasm.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Buran]

Actually, there is no such offer. The offer you linked to is expired.

And the fact that I've got lifetime on my Series 3 makes it all worth it. I love the remote (which you can buy separately via tivo.com, however) and the front display is nice, but what makes me still glad I have a Series 3 is the fact that I was able to transfer my lifetime subscription with no hassles.

I also went for a lifetime sub on my Sirius satellite radio in my car -- after doing the math for the TiVo and the satellite radio, it turned out that I'll break even in around three years. I plan to keep both devices for longer than that (until they die, basically, and even then I'm not afraid to repair them) so it's a good deal in the end, and one less monthly bill is one less worry.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a lovely piece of FUD. Who do you work for? Scientific Atlanta? Pioneer?

TiVo has 3 privacy models for you to choose from: opt-in, opt-in neutral, and opt-out. Opt-in = they collect your clicks, neutral = they collect your clicks anonymously (not tied to your account), opt-out = you guessed it FUDmaster, no clicks collected. Neutral (anonymous collection) is the default, but you can call TiVo at any time (all of 11 telephone buttons you must press) to change your privacy settings.

Enabling 30 second skips requires pressing 6 buttons on your remote. If hitting a sequence of 6 buttons is too much for you, you deserve the piece of shit cable company DVR you get, retard.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[demon]

And trust me, you'll need that automatic replacement with the cableco boxes, when they fail on you every month or two, for no apparent reason. Then just to spite you, you lose all your recorded shows when you have to get that new box. Kinda obviates the need for a DVR, when your recordings are probably going to go away on a regular basis.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the huge advantage all 3 of those have is the great integration with the service itself. No re-encoding of signals, etc. The guide is built in to the service. Cheaper monthly fees, even.

You seem to be missing the fact that the Tivo Series 3s are *JUST* like the cable company boxes in this respect.
There is no reencoding of the digital signals... plus, even with your cable company box, many channels (usually those numbered under 100) are still analog. Plus you can get OTA HD on the S3s.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[mosch]

If Tivo really gave customers what they wanted, they wouldn't be collecting and selling clickstreams,

This complaint goes into the paranoia file. I like that TiVo sells my anonymized clickstreams. The way I see it, they'll be telling a bunch of network executives that a member of a really good demographic (30s, wealthy neighborhood, owns some expensive toys, like an HD DirecTV TiVo) likes the following shows, movies and sports.

Hopefully this will help keep those shows, movies and sports broadcasts alive, just a little bit longer. And it could do so without any negative effects on me, at all.

they wouldn't be pushing ads into the UI,

I'd agree on this one, if I had the foggiest clue what you're talking about. Maybe the HD DirecTiVo lacks this or something. The closest thing I've seen to an "ad" is an occasional promotional item on the first menu. It's certainly never bothered me any.

they'd have a 30-second skip (without a hack)

I also have a Hughes HD DVR. It has 30 second skip. I can skip 'em more reliably with TiVo, triple-speed FF, then hit play. With the Hughes 30 second skip, i end up doing 6 30 second skips, then seeing if there are more ads, and if so, hitting it another time or two, and then having to use the 8 second back button to fix everything.

It's way more annoying than the TiVo stock FF.

and auto commercial skipping.

If they added this, they'd spend all of their money fighting the networks, the advertisers and such. It'd be great, but realistically, no commercially viable product can contain this feature today.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[glindsey]

Actually, it's a TiVo-branded firmware replacement for the old Motorola DVRs, and yes, I absolutely can't wait until it debuts in the Chicagoland area. (Provided it is relatively bug-free, but from what I've seen, a three-year-old relating his account of what happened on the show is more reliable than the current Motorola firmware.)

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Wyzardking]

They've added some neat features. You can subscribe to podcasts. They recently added what I think are video podcasts, but I'm not exactly sure. I watched some show by John Dvorak where he interviewed the Digg people. It can stream MP3s, so you don't need a seperate box for that. You can rent movies through amazon.com for $1.99. Once you hit the play button it keeps them around for 24 hours then deletes them, but that's still more convenient than netflix. Actually, all of those features are also available on the Series 2; they came with a (relatively) recent service update. "Streaming MP3s" means that your Tivo can act as a client to receive mp3 streams; you can use the Tivo Desktop software to host the mp3s on a computer on your home network, but I prefer http://galleon.tv/. I have my entire mp3 collection ripped and served using Galleon; having an older Tivo in my music room makes playing bass much easier (no cds to change, all albums are available in one easy to use interface, etc)

BTW, that Dvorak show is called "Cranky Geeks" -- love the title! :)

I have a series 2 also and it can transfer shows over the network, so I can keep every episode of BSG and a bunch of movies and such. That's very cool, except for the fact that the transfer rate is slow. Transfers are slow on the series 2, but you can usually start watching the shows you are transferring after a few minutes. Occasionally it will pause if it needs to transfer more before you can watch it, but that has rarely happened to us.

/ Happy owner of two Tivos
// Wishes he could afford the new HD one
/// Will stick with cable's HD DVR for now

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[zero_offset]

Of course, what sucks about that is when a random lightning strike kills your box. This happened to me with my first Tivo back around 2001-ish. I was a little annoyed that I lost my lifetime sub, but I bought another Tivo and subscribed with that one ... and it got struck by lightning about six months later.

After that I switched to DirecTV's Tivo, which I could get for $4/month with no up-front cost, and since then I've been waiting semi-patiently for Comcast to get their shit together and let me buy an HD Tivo so I can ditch satellite.

Christ. How did listening to music and watching TV become so fucking complicated?

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Buran]

Did you try repairing the boxes? You can get new parts from places like weaknees.com. If it's repairable, you can sell it for a fair bit of money on ebay due to the lifetime sub.

Mine is on my wireless net with a UPS/surge protector between the box and the power supply, so if it gets fried it's covered. But even if the power supply blows, or the hard drive fails, I can fix it.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[zero_offset]

No, these were direct hits on the house that each took out many thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Not just electronics, but light switches, lamps, pretty much everything electrical. Computers and similar electronics were completely destroyed. In the first hit the lightning entered the house through the outlet where the Tivo was plugged in, actually. They were the kinds of strikes where we lucked out that the house didn't burn down.

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[Buran]

Then would that not be covered under homeowner's insurance?

Re:why buy when I can rent?

[zero_offset]

Man, don't even go THERE. Yeah, but you're pretty much fucked after you make the claim. The first time I thought, "Whew, at least I have homeowners," and tallied up the damage, filed a claim, went through the process of having a shop verify the expensive stuff really was lightning damage and damaged beyond repair, bought new stuff and sent in the receipts, got reimbursed, etc etc etc... it took about six months, but hey, it was cool, all those thousands and thousands in homeowners was finally paying for itself. Sort of.

Then the following year we got hit again. I called the insurance company and they flat-out told me, "You can file another claim and we'll pay it, but we'll drop you immediately after, and none of the major carriers will ever insure you again."

My initial reaction was to call their bluff. It wasn't as if lightning strikes were my fault. Then I started making phone calls and inquiries, and the shitty part is that it's exactly how it works. I don't know what they call it, but basically insurers keep a sort of "permanent record" on you that all of them can see. One place I called said, "Homeowners is strictly for major disasters like fires, where your losses are tens or hundreds of thousands. A couple small claims for a few thousand will make you un-insurable by the major carriers for all intents and purposes."

What a racket, eh?

180/20 = 9

[Anonymous Coward]

180Hrs of SD or 20hrs of HD ? How come ? I thought HD only had twice as many pixels... ?

Re:180/20 = 9

[JamesRose]

Well, HD = 460? 720? 1080? i or p? (Btw, I have no idea what that stuff is, but I figure its to do with quality cos everyone says 1080i is bestest)

Re:180/20 = 9

[Anonymous Coward]

1080p is best, however most satelite/OTA (not sure about cable)HD programming is sent 1080i

Re:180/20 = 9

[jonnythan]

SD is roughly 480i. That's 640x480, 60 interlaced frames per second.

640 * 480 * 60 * 0.5 = 9,216,000 pixels/second

720p is 1280x720, 60 full frames per second

1280 * 720 * 60 = 55,296,000 pixels/second

1080i is 1920x1080, 60 interlaced frames per second.

1920 * 1080 * 60 * 0.5 = 62,208,000 pixels/second

720p delivers 6 times as many pixels per second and 1080i delivers almost 7 times as many pixels per second as SD.

720p delivers 3 times as many pixels per [full] frame as SD.

Re:180/20 = 9

[tx_derf]

Standard def is 480i = 640x480 pixels but only half every "pass". 640x480/2 = 153,600 pixels. Top of the line HD is 1080p = 1920x1080 pixels with all of them every pass. 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels. 2,073,600/153,600 = 13.5 times as many pixels. Factor in the compression and then add the overhead and 9:1 disk usage isn't all that unreasonable.

Re:180/20 = 9

[HTH NE1]

720p delivers 6 times as many pixels per second and 1080i delivers almost 7 times as many pixels per second as SD.

720p delivers 3 times as many pixels per [full] frame as SD.

But of course, TiVo records compressed signals, be it the exact compressed digital stream it receives via ATSC or CableCard, or its own compression of analog SD channels.

Re:180/20 = 9

[Yossarian45793]

Mod parent down. 480i is 480 lines, 30 times per second, or 240 lines, 60 times per second, depending on how you look at it. It is not 240 lines 30 times per second like the parent implies. Therefore, 480i gives 307,200 pixels, which is double what the parent claims. 1080p delivers about 7 times this many pixels, because 1080p is 30 frames per second, not 60. Technically, there are also 480i/30 and 1080p/60 standards, but the former is not used for TV broadcasts because it would look like shit, and the later is not used because it consumes too much bandwidth.

Re:180/20 = 9

[glitch23]

SD is roughly 480i. That's 640x480, 60 interlaced frames per second.

480i is 60 interlaced *fields* per second, or 30 complete frames per second. The same wording applies to 1080i. The math becomes simpler but arrives at the same answer.

Re:180/20 = 9

[jonnythan]

60 interlaced frames, to me, means 60 half frames, which is exactly what it is. I guess there can be some argument about the language :)

Can TIVO be used for ripping and transcoding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ages ago when TiVO came out I heard that it has DRM built in and cannot be used for ripping and transcoding recorded shows. For this reason I have never used it. Instead I use eyetv which makes it easy to rip and transcode (probably because eyetv is a German company not an American one)

Why bother with TiVO, can it do more than eyetv?

Re:Can TIVO be used for ripping and transcoding?

[BLKMGK]

I rip and transcode from my TIVO, can stream to other TIVO too....

Here's the problem

[tkrotchko]

Virtually all the new services require the cable/phone company's box to get the full range of channels because everyone is using encrypted QAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_tuner) so a standard QAM or ATSC tuner is useless for hi-def.

For example, the Verizon FIOS service has only the local channels unencrypted, so without the box, you can only receive a handful of channels.

It's my understanding the original spec cable card doesn't address the scrambled QAM channels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_card#Physical_ CableCARDs), and the new MCard spec is only due this month. But they simply aren't available, and who knows if they'll actually work when released?

So that fancy new 100" Plasma that supports every standard possible? You still need the box.

Re:Here's the problem

[Albanach]

Virtually all the new services require the cable/phone company's box to get the full range of channels because everyone is using encrypted QAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_tuner) so a standard QAM or ATSC tuner is useless for hi-def.

Wouldn't that be it has CableCard slots - so the box can decrypt the encrypted cable signals?

Re:Here's the problem

[Craig Davison]

The feature lacking from CableCARD that is addressed by MCard is two-way communication. MCard should support PPV, VOD, etc.

Re:Here's the problem

[jargoone]

I can't mod you down since I posted, so I'll reply instead.

a standard QAM or ATSC tuner is useless for hi-def.

Not only are you wrong as pointed out below, but an ATSC tuner is far from useless. It will allow me to receive OTA channels, which look vastly superior to the compressed crap signal that the cable company sends.

Re:Here's the problem

[douggmc]

What are you talking about? You are just plain wrong ... this is the point of the cable card in the US. It descrambles and the current cable card spec (1.0) is not multi-stream, but that is why there are 2 cable cards slots in TIVO (Series 3 and HD). The first slot is/will be multi-stream cable card (2.0) capable for when/if you want/need to go that route. You are an idiot and have no business posting if you don't know what you are talking about. ... and you are scored 5, Interesting .... Uuggghh!

Re:Here's the problem

[ssewell]

QAM tuner useless? No. Less useful, clearly... but not useless.

You see, here in Austin, TX, I only pay for basic cable (yes. the cheapest payment) from Time Warner, but I receive all the local channels in high def via QAM. You just have to be lucky enough to live in an area where clear QAM is used I suppose.

Re:Here's the problem

[demon]

Decrypting channels is the entire purpose of CableCARD (that and managing channel mappings). If CableCARD 1.0 (aka SCard) were so useless, there wouldn't be much point in making hardware to support it...

Yeah... Right

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivo is going to activate serial ATA later this year, and that TivoToGo support is coming as well.

Yeah right... Tivo has been feeding us Series 3 owners that line since the day they started shipping the unit.

Lifetime

[Rethcir]

Someone's going to make the obligatory "transfer lifetime subscriptions" comment and annoy me.

Re:Lifetime

[r_jensen11]

What the hell am I going to do with 30 subscriptions to Vibe?

Oh, you said Lifetime? Oh man, I feel sorry for you....

Compelling... IF you can get CableCARDs

[MrPerfekt]

I'd love love love to get one of these, I'd fork over cash right now but I'm unable to get CableCARDs so the device is useless to me.

I live in Phoenix where Cox is the dominant cable provider but like so many other condo/apt. complexes here in the area, I'm locked in to Qwest's TERRIBLE DSL-based TV service. This is presumably based by contract when the complex was built because they paid for "pre-wiring" to each room. As a result, I'm not able to get Cox. This is not a technical issue, Cox is in the complex next to me. Just some scheme thought up by someone that was greedy at Qwest some years ago.

I have DirecTV right now. It would be nice if they provided CableCARDs but nope, they love as much control over their own hardware as possible. I have the DirecTivo (Hughes HR-10) so I'm not too heartbroken but still, the situation sucks. If they'd just build a unit with component in's life would be a little better, no matter how grossly expensive it would be.

Re:Compelling... IF you can get CableCARDs

[Danga]

Have you ever tried Cox cable? The reason I ask is I recently moved to the Phoenix area from Chicago and I have Cox cable TV/internet/phone and the cable TV SUCKS. I have an HD tuner and the first shitty thing is the guide it has sucks and the searching capabilities are worthless and another extremely annoying thing is the HD channels will randomly drop for 5-15 minutes at a time for no reason (I notice about once or twice a week). I never thought I would miss Comcast cable but Cox surely made me miss Comcast. One thing I REALLY miss from Comcast was the OnDemand content. There even was a selection of free OnDemand movies which was really cool to have access to. My remote from Cox here has an OnDemand button but it doesn't do anything, why can't they get that feature setup too?

Anyway, I grew sick of Cox and wanted to switch to Qwest because they seemed to be less expensive and have better features and I am stuck in basically the opposite situation as you. My apartment complex is Cox only and Qwest either cannot or just will not give me service. Is Qwest really that bad? What other options are there besides satellite?

Re:Compelling... IF you can get CableCARDs

[lenroc]

I have Cox cable TV/internet/phone and the cable TV SUCKS. I have an HD tuner and the first shitty thing is the guide it has sucks and the searching capabilities are worthless

And that's why you buy a TiVo!

Re:Compelling... IF you can get CableCARDs

[MrPerfekt]

In short, I know Cox sucks but it's better than the alternative. At least to my knowledge, Cox offers CableCARDs so you can use this new Tivo with it. The problem with Qwest is that since they use DSL to deliver the TV service (yes, Cat-5 plugs into the box, not coax), it's technically impossible for them to offer cable cards as far as I know.

Qwest TV sucks mostly because they don't offer an HD DVR. You can have either a SD DVR or HD gateway box, not both. Also, they didn't offer HBO in HD at the time which was an annoyance.

Nope, very few options here.

History - that's why

[MrEkted]

Crucial to my DVR experience is filtering down the fat stream of 200 cable channels to what I want to see. It's not trivial to wade through all the repeats and shows that I've already viewed. The one thing a cable box DVR is never going to give you is a personal history - what you've already viewed and deleted, so you know that what's new on there is actually new.
That way, with a 20 hour HD DVR, you're not coming back from vacation to find that a marathon of "Planet Earth" has kicked off every other program on your box. With Tivo you get continuity of what you've viewed (i.e. Season Pass) that's at least recoverable if you must change hardware. Want to wade through 20 years of "Simpsons" to find that one episode you've never seen?
Even better is MythTV, which does all that, and skips commercials.

Re:History - that's why

[jotok]

Even better is MythTV, which does all that, and skips commercials.

Oh, yeah. And my Myth box has a terabyte of storage dedicated to video alone...so new shows kicking off old ones is not something I worry about :)

But recording HD with myth can be problematic. For encrypted cable you still need the set-top box and then you can capture s-video, but the quality is degraded. HD QAM broadcasts are still great, however, and I find that 99% of the TV I bother to watch is network TV anyhow (Heroes, Gray's, etc.), and what I can't get via broadcast I can bittorent.

Re:History - that's why

[BLKMGK]

Myth sounds great! Where can I get a CableCard adapter for it? Oh.....

Re:History - that's why

[MrEkted]

All trolling aside, I'll answer as if you asked a real question in case it informs someone else :o)

I run three tuners -
Analog cable through a Hauppauge 250 - direct connection to cable which can only tune channels below #65 on my cable.
Digital cable through a Hauppauge 250 - Myth tunes a cable box and I capture off s-video. Good picture, but SD only
HD Digital cable through a pcHDTV 5500 - QAM 256 HD signal decoded from cable (HD is not encrypted in my area)


I can also capture directly from my HD cable box via 1394 to my Mac.

The only thing I can't capture is HD HBO, which is a bummer. If I had somewhere to plug in a cable card, I would. If my cable company would unencrypt before sending out to firewire it would also solve the problem.
I'm sure that Tivo has solved this problem as well, but all-in-all I'd rather have the power of Myth than the one HD channel I can't record.

Re:History - that's why

[BLKMGK]

That wasn't a troll, I was serious. The lack of CableCard is a killer for Myth and that's part of the reason why the cable corps like it. you have an STB now with a firewire outputm, the CableCard will eventually replace it. Most places only send non-premium channels out via QAM - my cable company Comcast for instance. They are only required, I believe, to send out that which can be gotten OTA so if you're getting more feel lucky and do not be surprised if it changes one day.

Bottom line is that the content providers (yack) want to restrict what we can record and what we do with it - HBO is a perfect example with others happy to follow their lead first chance they get. Right now you're actually doing pretty good - many people aren't so lucky. I can get few OTA channels and not many via QAM either. Myth would do very little at all for me without CableCard support - never mind the PITA it is to set it up. What I and most others want is an appliance and the TIVO is exactly that - anyone in the household can figure it out. I have a DTIVO and I love it, it's a shame that Direct is too stupid to use TIVO for their HD boxes or I'd have had one of those 6 months ago. Instead I'm stuck watching SD on an HD set or doing a series of contortions that no one in my house but me understands to watch QAM or Torrent'd HD. I've complained to DTV and I may have to go with more expensive cable and an S3 or this new box just to keep a solid working interface. Sadly hacking these new ones SUX so I may be left with Bittorent if there's some show out there I want to take on the road with me to play on my PSP. I'm so pissed off about the situation I've stuck to watching SD on a 47inch HD set just because my options ALL suck right now. Be glad you've found yourself more fortunate but do NOT expect it to last as what you're doing is exactly what the content providers do NOT want...

Re:History - that's why

[nospmiS remoH]

I was fortunate enough to get the DirecTV HD TiVo while it was available for a short time. I even own it, instead of renting. I think it is probably worth more now on eBay than it was when I bought it. It will be a very cold day in hell, with pigs flying over head before I give that thing up. If DirecTV stops supporting it and tells me I have to upgrade, I will cancel my DirecTV contract on the spot. The real sad part is there is no other comparable solution out there right now. TiVo Rulez #1 !

Re:History - that's why

[MrEkted]

you have an STB now with a firewire outputm, the CableCard will eventually replace it

I don't need to worry about what they'd like to replace it with - there's an FCC mandate requiring the cable companies to supply firewire access.

Ease of use - roger that - Myth requires time, energy, & expertise to setup. But, the theme I'm supporting here is options. As I said originally, with Myth I have a database that I can take with me. There's value in knowing what I've seen and what I haven't.

As for content providers, I've got four ways to capture at the moment - Analog cable, S-video, QAM, and 1394. I could have 5 if I put an ATSC antenna on my roof. Let them attempt to shut those down and there will be 5 more to take their place. I sincerely believe that as fast as they try to lock things down we will find new ways of opening them back up. That's the way it has always worked, because in the end they have to open it up enough for me to view it. On the other hand, if I put my eggs in Tivo's basket I have one source with one easy kill switch - the "broadcast only" flag. I'd rather take my chances with the other coders/hackers. It was easy for the gov't to shutdown ReplayTV's commercial skipping. Impossible for them to squelch Myth. Tivo has to conform to stay around. That's reason enough for me to go the extra mile with a home brew. Granted there are three HD channels I can't currently record (pay content), but for me that's not a deal-breaker. The cable companies themselves solved that with HBO On Demand.

Re:History - that's why

[demon]

I don't need to worry about what they'd like to replace it with - there's an FCC mandate requiring the cable companies to supply firewire access.

Well, there's also an FCC mandate that they provide CableCARDs to customers for CableLabs certified devices - I'm discovering first hand how well that's working out. (The TiVo rep I got on the phone last week said she deals with calls about cablecos holding out on providing customers with CableCARDs about 4-5 times *a day*.) Cable MSOs have internal policies which often are totally counter to FCC regs, and they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern ways.

Re:History - that's why

[zero_offset]

I had to argue for two weeks with DirecTV to keep my old SD DirecTV Tivo when I moved into my new house. The DTV guy showed up and while I was in another room he took my Tivo to his truck and plugged in one of their shitty DVRs. It took about four days to get my Tivo back (with all my settings and subscriptions still there), then another week to get the billing straightened out. DTV never did send any return details for their DVR, which is still in a box in the other room. (Awhile back somebody on slash told me I could probably eBay it, but I keep forgetting.)

Listening to music and watching TV has become a total clusterfuck of complexity and expense.

Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[dada21]

I use a high end MCE 2005 machine right now for our household, and it works fairly well. Unencrypted HD, 4 tuners total, household distribution (we have 2 boarders who rent from us and utilize their Xbox 360's as remote hubs). System is very stable, the wife can watch all her HGTV and TLC shows, I can download my aXXo first releases, and we're happy. The downside is no HD, because the CableCARD system just doesn't work well with PCs that aren't designed for it. Tried it, failed repeatedly. And I'm a techie.

This sounds to me like a great idea -- there's a ton of HD content over Comcast that I'd probably watch an hour or two a week of, more if I am sick or after a long stretch of work in the winter. I haven't found much HD content available over bittorrent sites, just a few RIPs. But I don't know if I really feel like paying for cable (and then a TIVO monthly bill) for what we get. From a legal perspective, I'd probably buy downloads (PPV online) if they were available and were high quality. But they're not available, so I resort to my own form of PPV. We generally buy movies we download, yet still keep the downloaded version on the PC to watch. I assume Tivos can't accept an XVid Video, so there is a downside.

This leaves a lot to be desired, but it's a step in the right direction. What I want in addition is:

1. Ability to download my own content, or RIP my own content.
2. Ability to remove commercials "real-time": we use a MCE plug-in that works well.
3. Ability to speed up shows without affecting speech tone (plug-in).
4. Remote access capability to a PC or a video game console (preferably both).

Tivo doesn't offer any of these, AFAIK. That's a big limiting factor. Someone needs to step up and provide these services, and their market will blossom.

Re:Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[glindsey]

Ability to speed up shows without affecting speech tone (plug-in).

I'm surprised you have to do this yourself. Most syndicated shows on television these days are sped up 110 to 120 percent by default. You can usually tell whenever music is playing, as the rhythm will be stilted and shaky (since the algorithm they use alters the speed dynamically based on the soundtrack, speeding things up the most during lulls in conversation).

Re:Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I haven't found much HD content available over bittorrent sites, just a few RIPs."
http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=hdtv
20000+ results

Re:Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[CrawlingEvil]

Actually, with existing TiVos, both 1 and 4 are available. It's called TiVoToGo. For downloading content to your TiVo, you simply encode video to MPEG-2 and put it in the correct folder on your computer, as determined when you installed the TiVo Desktop software. Yeah, you've got to re-encode to MPEG-2, but with ffmpeg and a shell script, that's no big deal. There's numerous programs for the PC that'll also do the re-encode for you. In fact, TiVo Desktop software might just do it now, too, but since I use a Mac, I don't know for sure.

As for four, again with TiVoToGo functionality, you can download programs off the TiVo and onto your local hard drive. They are DRM protected, but can be played back on Macs or PCs. Actually, with software that'll strip the DRM, you can also play the programs back on Linux. Apparently TiVoToGo functionality is not yet supported on the HD units, but is suppose to arrive soon. I'm guessing extra work had to be done to protect the content streams, since the content providers are extra paranoid about HD content. There's also numerous programs that'll automatically download shows off your TiVo when they record, download them to your PC, and re-encode them for common portable media players like iPods, Zunes, PSPs, etc...

You'll probably never see two on a commercial box. Yes, you've added the functionality as a plug-in to MCE, but if that plug-in starts to become popular, you'll probably see it disappear. Other companies before TiVo have been taken to court and heavily sued because they provided a PVR that stripped commercials. So far, they've either won in court or driven court costs so high, the defendants folded. Either way, if either the MCE plug-in or Myth plug-in becomes popular and comes under the radar of the media providers, you'll probably see those features going away. TiVo, as the most visible of the PVR solutions, has had to play a very delicate game of providing features customers want balanced against the desires of the media providers, who can make their life hell if they become too threatened by the technology.

And as a final note, I'd like three, too.

Re:Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[Fred Ferrigno]

I had a standard definition Series 2 TiVo until I moved and got an HDTV. You can transfer movies to and from a PC. Shows coming off the TiVo are DRM-encumbered by default, but you can hack the unit itself to disable DRM entirely or run a program on your PC to scrape it from individual files. Videos transferred from your PC have to be converted to MPEG-2 at a specific resolution if you go through TiVoToGo. However, there's an application called tivoserver that will convert videos on the fly and serve them up through the TiVo's Multi-Room Viewing interface.

TiVo doesn't support removing commercials and likely never will for obvious reasons. Your other two feature requests seem like they have a rather limited appeal, frankly.

The big benefit of the TiVo has always been the interface. I lived with it for a few years and it does everything it's supposed to do very well. I've put off getting cable at my new address because the only HD DVR they offer is the crappy Motorola box. TiVo introducing this box right now is really my dream come true.

Re:Copyright Cable versus Bootleg Pirate Bay?

[Anonymous Coward]

While Tivo might not offer transering movies and such through their software. pyTivo lets you stream most videos from your PC to your unhacked TiVo

Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[kmahan]

I've used TiVo for years. When I got an HD tv I got the comcast/motorola DVR (DCT3416). I've been through 3 boxes so far. The software in the box is horrible. It gets "busy" and doesn't respond to the remote for 30 seconds or more, but it is queuing up all the buttons to replay as soon as it isn't busy. If you fast forward/reverse there is a chance that it will get freeze. Playback sometimes doesn't include sound unless you change the channel and go back. Don't even get me started on how the box handles (crashes is a better word) EAS (emergency signals). I've accumulated a dozen or so software issues with the box that the company says "we know, but there is no scheduled fix date."

And my favorite is that after a couple of months the box will start "slowing down" more and more frequently. The fix is to replace the box -- so says Comcast.

So yes -- I will gladly be purchasing the TiVo HD box just so I can get rid of the piece of junk Comcast/Motorola calls a DVR.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[cayenne8]

Weird tho...

On the Tivo site I saw this in their FAQ:

"Can I use any wireless network adapter on my TiVo HD box?

No, only the TiVo Wireless G Network Adapter allows a wireless connection to your home network. The TiVo Wireless G Network Adapter can be purchased separately at TiVo.com and most retailers."

Now...what in the world makes their Tivo branded netword adapter different than any other one? Is there now a special connection on the newer Tivo's...on my old series 2, I just plugged in a Linksys USB wireless....

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Applekid]

That's because some USB wireless adapters suck and don't support Linux and since it works in Windows people are going to blame TiVo instead of the faulty manufacturer.

Before they released the "official" TiVo wireless adapter, there was a compatibility guide for popular adapters... but it wasn't very helpful since often times you had to filter down to the exact revision number of it before it will work. The official one is a guaranteed thing.

(and looked cooler next to my box than anything else I hooked up on it. I bit the bullet and later got a compatible USB ethernet adapter instead, though.)

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[jargoone]

Now...what in the world makes their Tivo branded netword adapter different than any other one?

No special connector, but perhaps a combination of a particular wireless chipset and maybe hacked firmware on the adapter. They're most likely doing it to ensure consistency and, of course, generate more revenue.

Don't worry though, it'll be hacked...

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[_Sharp'r_]

Drop your cable company, get Dishnetwork and a VIP 622 or 722 HD DVR.

It's a heck of a lot cheaper than Cable+Tivo and it's actually better than even this new HD Tivo (Faster interface, more recording time, etc...). Plus, allowing for the recent release date of this Tivo box, it's also going to have a lot less bugs than this new box for a while yet.

Oh yeah, and you get many more HD channels than your local cable company is going to have. And you're going to get new HD channels faster as they come out. And external USB hard drive storage is slated for the middle of next month, not as a "replacement" drive, but as portable external storage of recordings that you can use in addition to the internal drive and also take around to your other HD receiver in the house.

And did I mention it will likely cost you way less than local cable+tivo? In terms of upfront and ongoing costs?

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[dreamt]

Now...what in the world makes their Tivo branded netword adapter different than any other one? Is there now a special connection on the newer Tivo's...on my old series 2, I just plugged in a Linksys USB wireless....

Its always been a driver support issue. The vendors are constantly changing their chipsets, etc with a small hardware revision number change, not always apparent looking at the packaging. The whole reason why Tivo came out with their own branded adapter was to have one that doesn't change and is always compatible with Tivo.

The Tivo wireless adapter also has some additional processing capabilities which offloads processing from Tivo's low-power processor, which I believe is how they handle things like WPA, for example.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[edmicman]

Just hope it doesn't rain!

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[gatzke]

The TimeWarner SA 8300 is a load of garbage as well. The interface is terrible and it hangs on occasion. It gets confused on HDMI output and blacks the screen when it flakes on HDCP connections. It gets a black screen and becomes nonresponsive a lot, especially when recording two HD channels.

Why can't they just license the tivo software?

Sadly, the TIVO won't do on demand or pay per view stuff.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[jdray]

We've had DirecTV + TiVo for years and really love it. Our friends got DirecTV recently and got the new DirecTV-branded DVR. It sucks. Bad. We're keeping our TiVo-based unit until some better option comes along. Does the inclusion of CableCARD slots in this new TiVo HD unit mean that we can get DirecTV tuners for it? Of course, that would presume that DirecTV had a CableCARD product, right?

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[BLKMGK]

NO! It's a generic USB wireless card that they have specced to work with their drivers. If you buy a decent non-borked USB wireless adapter it will work just as well - as it does on mine today....

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[BLKMGK]

No, Direct severed their ties with TIVO. They will not have any sort of decoder card for that slot - that's a CableCard slot designed by the CABLE industry. Right now if you want SAT and TIVO you're stuck with an SD DTIVO as I am. I'm ready to go HD myself but I refuse to believe the Direct HD DVR is any good considering their track record. I've also experienced the DISH stuff - no thanks you only get to fool me once. Cable is more expensive but I'm really close to spending more just to get what I want and telling Direct so long. That they cut ties with TIVO REALLY pisses me off. Worse, they are slowly moving to new encoding that the old DTIVO boxes will be unable to decode. Nice huh?

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[HTH NE1]

Many wired adapters work as well, but only needed for the Series2. Series3 already has a port for wired access. Series1 doesn't have features that would use it, but internal cards are available.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[HTH NE1]

The TimeWarner SA 8300 is a load of garbage as well. The interface is terrible and it hangs on occasion. It gets confused on HDMI output and blacks the screen when it flakes on HDCP connections. It gets a black screen and becomes nonresponsive a lot, especially when recording two HD channels.

Is that the Passport or Mystro software? I'm told the Mystro software is so craptacular that in one city where it is running as beta software, they are in negotiations with the city about what reparations TWC are going to give to customers for failure to deliver DVR service.

Even the non-DVR cable boxes running Mystro are incompatible with TiVo Suggestions, crashing if it tries to change channels at the same time the channel you're leaving has a new program starting, i.e. on the hour or half-hour. (Suggestions have no padding option.) The asynchronous update of the OSD bar with new data screws up the attempt to change channels, resulting in tuning the wrong channel, not changing channels at all, or a crash and shutdown requiring turning it back on manually.

Why can't they just license the tivo software?

They want to own the entire solution themselves and not be beholden to anybody. Passport was licensed software; Mystro is TWC's own development.

Sadly, the TIVO won't do on demand or pay per view stuff.

I don't miss those, and if I did, I'd use a cable box connected to a Series2 TiVo to access them.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[gatzke]

We are doing HD (new sweet 50 inch 1080p LCD monster). Cable HD PVR was our only option for encrypted stuff. They don't encrypt local HD for us, only ESPN, HDNET movies, Discovery, etc.

I think we are not Mystro, but we have a variety of problems. They post an alert every time a new recording starts (even if you are watching recorded) although you don't need to know (no conflict resolution to handle, just starting and wanted to let you know). Things go missing, no recording. No season pass manager, so you never know what old season pass requests exist. Terrible terrible UI.

They do have a eSATA port enabled, so you could add a TB cheap. Encrypted on the disk, but that is ok.

And again, HDMI is a mess. All my stuff is 1.2 or 1.3, but they still flake out and you have to cycle the amp and PVR to get your show running again. Nothing makes me happy. I wish my Wii was a PVR, my Wii makes me happy (although laggy and not 1080p).

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[RackinFrackin]

I bought an ethernet card from 9thtee for my series 1 tivo several years back. At the time I couldn't believe I was actually spending $70 for an ethernet card, but since it allowed me to drop my phone line, it has saved me a lot of money.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[jZnat]

That myth doesn't happen anymore just to let you know. I've had Dish for quite a while now, and it has only gone out a couple times during extremely bad storms (Chicago). Before, I had Comcast, and let me tell you that they went down a lot more than that, and if you count the graphical and audio glitches that seem to happen every 15 minutes or so, you've got a shitload of downtime with that crappy company...

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Buran]

The Tivo wireless adapter has some components in it that offload some of the additional processing required for WPA onto the card. You can use other wireless adapters (there's a list on tivo.com) without trouble, but you will not be able to use WPA.

Whether there's the same restriction for g-based networking I don't know. But I bought the Tivo adapter so I could actually properly secure my network, and I've had absolutely no problems.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[demon]

A myth, is it? My parents have DirecTV HD, and if a decent rain gets going, the MPEG signal starts having visible cutout. If only it were a myth...

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[jZnat]

So maybe DirecTV is crap then? Try out another satellite company.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Anonymous Coward]

Then either your parents or the folks they had install the dish screwed up royally, and don't have it aimed properly. Either that, or they live in a mountain valley or something. There is absolutely no reason for heavy rain to attenuate your signal to the point where it can't be picked up. The ionic interference caused by a severe thunderstorm can cause signal loss, but it has to be one hell of a storm. I had a dish for four years, and lost signal perhaps five times: once due to so much snow that it collected on the dish, and the rest due to severe thunderstorms.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Cramer]

DTV is putting very little error correction data in the HD streams -- more bandwidth for the HD. The result... a single drop of rain can cause errors. My dish is aimed perfectly -- power level is high enough set things on fire :-) -- and yet the slightest bit of rain causes pixelation. They don't have that much HD (yet?) so it's rarely a problem.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Cramer]

it's actually better than even this new HD Tivo (Faster interface, more recording time, etc...). Plus, allowing for the recent release date of this Tivo box, it's also going to have a lot less bugs than this new box for a while yet.

Well, seeing as no one has this new box yet, performance comparisions are meaningless. It'll be faster than the S3, which IS faster than a 622. And Tivo's gear is significantly more stable than DISH and DTV hardware. The current firmware on the 622 has a nice handful of bugs that stop it from fetching guide data. I've seen it fist hand -- and find it amusing... "that wouldn't be happening if you still had your tivo." It also fetches guide data once per day unlike the DTV systems that get guide data in "real time" (i.e. continuous download.) Granted, the SA tivos (S1-S3 & "Tivo HD") will only fetch guide data once per day, but those with network connectivity can get "urgent" updates as it's connecting to tivo every hour.

Recording time is a function of the hard drive. You can easily replace the drive with a "much" larger one, and far cheaper than buying the same capacity direct from Tivo. Given the choice, I'll buy the 80GB Tivo HD and put in my own 750-1000GB drive.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[demon]

Lovely - that plus "HD lite" makes me less sad that the Series3 only works with cable.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Anonymous Coward]

The dish itself is supposed to be grounded to prevent static build up along with the LNB (the thing that looks like the focus point of the dish). People that install satellite dishes have to follow the National Electrical Code, unless of course they don't know or don't care. If your house catches on fire because of poor grounding will your insurance cover it? Sorry about the rant, I have seen way too many mickey mouse style satellite installs.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Cramer]

Actually "HD Lite" (1080i that's 1280x1080) doesn't actually look that bad. Now TNT HD... holy hell what are they thinking. (that's TNT, not DTV/DISH/Cable's fault.)

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[johnsmith_12345]

Cutoff for Direct tivos is in August!!!

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[BLKMGK]

Seriously? Is that for the HD units or for the SD units too? If so I've heard no furor over it and no one has been calling me up trying to sell me their own units. If my signal goes dead in August due to this then I'll likely dump them...

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[johnsmith_12345]

All I know is that I had to fight them for the privilege to continue to use my SD Direct tivos because of the cutoff in august. At least that is what the stupid people on the phone would tell me. They could just be trying to scare me into upgrading to one of there shitty DVRs.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[BLKMGK]

I spoke to a rep at length about "upgrading" to their HD DVR. Despite a pretty long conversation and the rep's assurance that they found the new HD devices to work well in the end I declined to upgrade and expressed my anger\frustration at their having dropped TIVO. She said that many were upset but that the new DVRs worked great... really!

I couldn't bring myself to do it and stuck with the SD unit for now. If ComCast didn't add up to be more expensive for pretty much the same thing I'd get one of the S3 boxes and call it a day. I hope to hell that Direct has some clue as to how badly they screwed up dropping TIVO and that one day it bites them in the ass. I left DISH after multiple years of service becasue I wanted a decent DVR and their's was REALLY bad, I think I will eventually be leaving Direct for the same reasons despite being otherwise happy with the service :-(

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[_Sharp'r_]

The current firmware on the 622 has a nice handful of bugs that stop it from fetching guide data.

Are you sure about this? I've had a 622 since within 10 days of when they were released and have never had any guide data problems. From the message boards I read regularly the only problem I've ever heard of even close to that was that Dishnetwork screwed around with some of the OTA guide data streams, especially the PBS one, that was broken/fixed in a couple releases, but that was a general guide issue for receivers with OTA antennas, not really specific to the 622.

Which specific firmware release are you talking about? There are three that are currently in use for the 622.

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[Cramer]

I've seen it with my own eyes, so yes. I don't know what firmware it's running as it's not mine -- I'm not a DISH subscriber, but it's fairly recent release; maybe a week or two?

Re:Comcast/Motorola DVR is CR*P

[johnsmith_12345]

Lucky You. I would Move to a Series 3 in a Heart Beat if I could get Cable out here in the boonies.
My choices are Dish, Direct TV and the one over the air channel that I receive out here.

Storage vs Price aka TiVo the Software Company

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish TiVo would set up their boxes to accept a standard sized HD in addition to the HD they already use. I really want to buy one, but paying $600 for 160GB of storage is just not ok in my book. With hard drive prices the way they are right now, I dont get why TiVo doesnt offer better storage, at least as an option.

That said, I'd pay $600 for a TiVo PCIEx1 card and the software to run TiVo on my PC without breaking a sweat, and yes Id still pay the monthly fee. This way I control my storage options and as they get better I can take advantage of the hardware instead of being taken advantage of. Obviously that isnt going to happen, but if it did imo TiVo could rule the Tuner card market!

Re:Storage vs Price aka TiVo the Software Company

[HTH NE1]

There's already a backdoor to enable the external Serial ATA (eSATA) on the current Series3 model. People have hooked up a single 750 GB eSATA drive to the existing 250 GB internal SATA drive for a 1 TB TiVo (in metric units).

I'm thinking about getting an eSATA RAID enclosure for this, but I don't know if there's an upper capacity limit. (Others have hooked up such a RAID enclosure as a replacement for the internal drive.)

Re:Storage vs Price aka TiVo the Software Company

[Jherek Carnelian]

The real question is - has anyone cracked the encryption so that you can just move that external drive over to your PC and do what you want with the recorded shows?

Re:Storage vs Price aka TiVo the Software Company

[HTH NE1]

The real question is - has anyone cracked the encryption so that you can just move that external drive over to your PC and do what you want with the recorded shows? There's no guarantee that the TiVo will not span recordings between the internal and external drives, making many, most, or even all of the recordings stored on the external drive be partial recordings. Any extraction you'd want to do with the drives as a pair. (So much for using external drives for off-line storage as well: removal divorces the drives and any remarriage treats the external drive as blank.)

Earlier solutions such as that used on DirecTiVos just hacked the TiVo software to store recordings as unencrypted. TiVoization as decried in GPLv3 prevents such modification in modern units. Exploiting TiVoToGo is a more effective crack, but will be disabled for HD content. (I wonder if SD digital content will be transferable.)

I'm more interested in any progress in cracking 5C encryption over Firewire.

All CableCARD does is decrypt (encrypted) QAM.

[capitaladot]

Read the Wiki article, where it is succinctly stated:

The physical CableCARD that is inserted into the host device is a PCMCIA type II card which handles decryption of video, and making sure that only people that have paid for the channel may view it. This is also known as "conditional access module" function.

Re:All CableCARD does is decrypt (encrypted) QAM.

[tkrotchko]

In theory, you are correct. However:
    http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-8900_7-5581176-1.html

The issue in a nutshell is the cable providers would prefer you to use their box, because Cablecard didn't support 2-way connectivity (not yet). And since the cablecards aren't that common, hardly any TV's (even high-end) have a cablecard slot.

It would have been simpler to go with DVB.

Re:All CableCARD does is decrypt (encrypted) QAM.

[demon]

CableCARDs themselves have always supported bidirectional communication - it's just that CableLabs won't license any device for bidirectional communication that doesn't implement OCAP. Read this to learn why OCAP is evil.

Re:Good night, sweet prince.

[cayenne8]

"American actor and comedian Kel Mitchell was found dead"

Never heard of him...

for HDTV over the air EyeTV is better than TiVO

[Anonymous Coward]

I used TiVO, then used the Linux alternative and finally switched to EyTV. For unencripted DHTV over the air, EyeTV is obviously the best, it is a polished commercial product which makes it easy to program, rip and transcode in many formats and codecs, for a decent price (about $80 - I also had to pay an extra $10 or 20 a Divx licence, but it was worth the money) Recently they extended the support for different cards and many of them are not manufactured under their name. Unfortunately eyetv is mac only software.

Forgot to add the cost of the cable cards

[ad0gg]

$5 rental per card * 2 = $10 extra a month on top of the tivo fees. Cable box i rent is $12 and it also gives me access to on demand premium channels allowing me instant access to all the shows(for that month) to premium channels i subscribe too.

Re:Forgot to add the cost of the cable cards

[glindsey]

Sure, if you don't mind your box occasionally locking up, rebooting, and "forgetting" to record things. Comcast's DVR boxes, at least, have firmware that is so incredibly buggy, it makes Windows 3.11 seem rock solid by comparison. In fact, TiVo has written new firmware for one of Comcast's Motorola STBs, and from what I've heard it is currently in beta testing.

However, there are three big things TiVo needs to have operational on this box to really make it worthwhile: Multi-Room Viewing, Home Media Option, and TivoToGo. Well, okay, MRV and TTG for sure -- HMO is nice, but not really essential. On Demand content would be nice, but could be replaced by On Demand shows streaming off the net in time. TiVo is already partnered with Amazon Unbox, but man, it would be nice if Comcast dumped their crap DVRs, rented out S3Ls instead, and offered On Demand shows as downloadable content.

Re:Forgot to add the cost of the cable cards

[Arcady13]

I pay $1.50 per cable card where I live, costing me $3 for each TiVo. They charge me $13 to rent their crappy DVR. The TiVo costs me about $8 a month, so the difference is pretty much a wash. So the only real extra cost is buying the TiVo. It was a stretch for me to get my Series3, but with this new box I can afford to put one in the den and bedroom too.

Also, the new TiVo HD supports M-cards (multi stream) so you will only need one cablecard if your cable company supports them.

slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone find a cache?

Oops

[Craig Davison]

Sorry, I'm an idiot. CableCARD 2.0 will be two-way. MCards are just CableCARDs that can decode multiple channels simultaneously, which is why you only need one with this Tivo.

Re:Oops

[demon]

CableCARDs have always been capable of bidirectional communication. The problem is that CableLabs won't allow anything that doesn't implement OCAP to do bidirectional communication. See this for more information about the pure, unadulterated evil that is OCAP - then please call your representative, and/or the FCC, and tell them why you think OCAP is bad, and CableLabs and the cable industry at large should be forced (yes, forced) to open up bidirectional comm via DOCSIS (what they're using now anyway) for all consumer electronics vendors, not just those who will suck the big OCAP dick.

Incorrect

[Pap22]

Standard def NTSC is 720x480

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Video_Standards .svg

Re:Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't really correct someone by pointing to an article on Wikipedia. Instead you need to find the source used to verify the WP article. Then you can present that source as, perhaps, authoritative on the matter. I actually do not think NTSC is 720 x 480. That is much higher and wider than would have been considered when NTSC was devised. But I am not going to take the time to do your homework for you. Please provide us with a source, other than Wikipedia or someone quoting Wikipedia, to back up your claim.

But it's not interesting enough.

[Medievalist]

Sorry, buying a Tivo is not as much fun as building a MythTV box from scratch.

Not as frustrating, either, I suppose, but these things often go hand in hand.

Re:But it's not interesting enough.

[vfrex]

Frustrating is an understatement. I can't even change get myth to change channels!

Re:But it's not interesting enough.

[sjf]

I agree, but I'm not sure my wife and kids would.

Also, while it pales in comparison with some Apple products for instance, TiVo's UI is excellent compared to most other set top devices. The peanut remote is sheer class.
(I came back to TiVo after two years overseas, and was very happy to find that all the button's were still encoded in my muscle memory.) Ease of use and reliability are definitely worth paying for.

Re:But it's not interesting enough.

[Von Helmet]

You can have it.

I sold my mythbox after about a year struggling to get it to work. There was always just more stuff to fix. It was the TV card, then the remote, then the aerial isn't strong enough so I need an amplifier even though all our digiboxes cope fine, then getting the thing to standby, then this, then that, then the other.

I have a job, training courses, a wife and a baby. I don't have time for this hassle.

I sold the box for £250 (~$500) and bought a Topfield PVR, which is pretty much the top of the line PVR you can buy. It works perfectly out of the box. Best of luck to the guy who bought my old mythbox hoping to get it set up nice and easy.

Re:But it's not interesting enough.

[Medievalist]

Glad you got some money back, anyway. I didn't have any major problems; but I'm not doing HD, and I hear stability has really improved recently so my experience was probably not as harrowing as that of the early adopters.

Weirdly enough, I don't even watch TV... I built the box for the rest of the family after we were at a friends' house and saw his. I guess I had the advantage of knowing exactly what capture card to buy, too (hauppage).

Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

I had Series 2 TiVo for about a year and a half. It was OK. I've always questioned the value of the "service" though. What are you getting for 12.95 a month? TiVo is basically TV guide on crack. The fact that I could store my shows on my computer was of almost no value to as the TiVo 802.11 "g" adapter can actually only transmit @ 10 Mb/s because that is the maximum speed of the TiVo. It takes almost as much time to transfer as it does to watch the show. The "intelligent" recording is rarely that. Frequently TiVo fills its drive with a bunch of stuff that is largely uninteresting - that then needs to be deleted. Great more work to make room for shows I *do* want to watch. Of course there is the auto delete feature but it doesn't make room if you want to record something. A real blow to any sort of justification for a "service" fee was the introduction of the "promotion" on the TiVo primary page. The little star has "information" that I might want about say taking an RV trip across America. Ah, no? Then TiVo would add buttons from time to time to some of the user screens advertising things such as the virtues of the Sony Bravia HD TV's. Great, TiVo I'm glad that you have a shiny new marketing platform - but now I want my service fee back! Sometime during the time that I acquired my TiVo and the time that I left, they started the "you get the box with the service fee" deal. It is a bit of a better deal but not that much better. Also, TiVo support is absolutely the worst thing in the world. Navigating around on their site just gives the impression that they want their users and people trolling forums to answer all their customer questions for them.

So I get an HD set, and I'm a cable guy so I'm looking around at what my options are. TiVo wants me to spend 800 bucks on their (then current) HD recorder. Riiiight, not so much. I talk to my provider and here is what they will give me:

HD DVR - 1080i(p?) recording. 160 GB drive. Two tuner record and watch capability. Show listings. No advertisements in the UI. And it comes with HDMI Out and Optical audio out of the box. All for the fabulous low price of 5.95/mo with no money down. As an added bonus, it requires only three cables to hookup to a good HD TV - HDMI, Power Cord and Coax feed from the cable company.

I fail to see how TiVo can possibly remain relevant in the face of this overwhelming opposition. In my mind there is no way that that $300 and a monthly service fee can compete with the Cable guys option. As a personal point of irritation, paying for a service (apart from TV, which is a whole separate conversation) and then being advertised to is simply unacceptable.

My thought for TiVo when I made the switch is that TiVo needs to exit the hardware business ASAP and start licensing their technologies to the cable companies. I imagine a model similar to Direct TV would be good. The cable boxes that I've gotten from RCN and Comcast both could use some UI improvements (RCN is def. not as good as Comcast).

Either that or sell me a box and don't ask me for any more cash.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[RightSaidFred99]

You're cranky because you're paying for something and they have a few unobtrusive adverts? Seems like nitpicking. The problem with the non-Tivo units is the interface sucks. I've got an HR-10 and I've long considered moving back to cable (less hassle than DirecTV), but the standard cable DVRs you get are complete shit compared to the Tivo.

You pay for quality, that's the way it's always been.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

It's the principal of it. More importantly though - who's to say that it won't become more intrusive in the future. You have no say - and TiVo certainly doesn't want you giving them suggestions.

The thing is - Tivo at the time of switch couldn't even offer me a reasonable solution so it's more or less a moot point.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[josteos]

Every person I know who has a generic cable-company-provided DVR says it sucks balls. They tell me it freezes, its slow, it crashes, it loses shows, it fails to record.... every damn one of them has reported this. They brag about how they saved a whole $7 off my monthly fee while asking me to burn a copy of the latest BSG because their DVR barfed. Good for them!

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

They're saving far more than $7/month because they didn't spend several hundred buying the DVR!

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

Well, I'll be honest - the "reception" is a bit spotty both with Comcast and RCN. Seems like there are artifacts in the playback often. I have no idea if that is the DVR or the network delivery - probably both A and B. The DVR records shows when I ask it to. Only once have I had an issue with a show not being recorded in its entirety. Apart from that it has been fine.

As for interface speed - the TiVo series 2 was probably a scosh slower than my current dvr. The channel changing is def. faster.

Funny you mention BSG - I had a series recording for BSD this past year on TiVo. The time was moved from Firday night to Sunday. TiVo botched the change and I didn't get my epiosde.

Generally speaking I already think TV costs too much - somewhere along the line we forgot that the Advertisements were used to support the broadcast of the shows and got suckered into paying for the broadcast and being shown ads.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[therealalcaron]

I can't remember the last time I owned a Tivo that didn't automatically push it's "recommendations" off the drive automatically to make room for things you have scheduled. Not only that but since I've had my Series 3 I have consistently found new and worthwhile episodes of tv shows and movies recorded by tivo on its own based on what I watched. Matter of fact, in the last, oh, 4 years? I haven't been without TV for very long at all, and in those four years I've NEVER seen it fail to record something because it was out of space that was occupied by "recommendations", and in the same period of time I have very seldom gone into the recommendations (now handily in their own folder on the S3, thats nice!) and found nothing of interest. I was watching the hell out of Man vs. Wild a couple months ago, then I stopped because I got busy, I had never put it in to record for some reason but lo and behold I go back to my tivo and in the recommendations are a bunch of episodes I hadn't seen! How handy! Better still, Survivorman, hadn't watched that in awhile, but based on me watching man vs. wild, guess what was in my recommendations folder? All of this on a day when I expected to have to hunt for something to watch because it was summer and all the shows I watch are off for now...how handy. ProTip: use the Thumbsup and ThumbsDown buttons...seriously. I've used them like, 4 times, and it's recording nothing but greatness!

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that TiVo needs to start offering service above and beyond what they offer now in order to remain relevant. I think they need to get into the business of augmenting the TV watching experience with extra content and interactivity features. To give a couple of examples:

Imagine you're watching a movie and you see an actor who you recognize but whose name you can't remember. Instead of having it bug you for the rest of the movie until you can get to IMDB to look it up (or, worse yet, pausing the movie to look it up on IMDB), TiVo could offer integration with IMDB that would you to view information about the actors using your remote.

Imagine you're in a fantasy baseball/football/basketball league and you're watching a game on TV. TiVo could integrate with one or more fantasy sports providers to allow you to enter your league information into your TiVo. TiVo could then give you live updates on the scores in your league as you're watching the game.

And there's a ton of other ways that TiVo could act as the computer in the TV watching room that would replace the laptop that so many people keep with them while they're watching TV.

That and TiVo needs to integrate with Cable/Satellite providers to allow users to use TiVo without using the set-top box from the provider. Whether that means licensing their technology to the providers or fighting for legislation that forces those providers to inter-operate, this needs to happen for TiVo to remain an actual option for consumers.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[IcePop456]

Try not making universal statements when you don't have the experience. Both Patriot Media (former RCN, a small company in NJ) and Comcast, both using similar motorola boxes, have ads in the Guide data and other parts of the UI.

As for the HD DVR Tivo, why would you have any more cables? Plug cable card in (no cable). Plug coax into that, use power cord and coax. Sounds the same.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[LMacG]

As has been stated, you must not have Comcast. There is so much advertising on their guide page now that each "page" only holds about four lines of actual programming information. Occasionally I'll notice the marketing buttons on the main screen, but a double-click of the TiVo button takes me to Now Playing so quickly that they really make no difference. They're not stealing room on the screen from anything else.

If you didn't like TiVo "filling the drive" then it would have been a simple matter of choosing to NOT record suggestions. Me, I like suggestions. They found Pete and Pete for me.

As far as support, I guess I've never really needed any. The box works. However, I've never felt frustrated by their website. You want a twisty maze of web pages, all different, try Sprint PCS. They define abysmal.

BTW, do you ever buy a newspaper or magazine? Holy crap, there are ads in there! Pay to ride the subway? OMG, more ads. Pay to go to the movies? Jeez, they're everywhere. Trying to single out TiVo as some horrible violator of your principles just doesn't wash.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[cmoney]

I'm right there with you man. I was an original Tivo user many many years back. Tivo's autorecord feature was the first thing I turned off. Then word got out that viewing habits were being sold while the monthly fee was going up. That just killed me. It's really just the principle of it all. Why am I paying for a service that's got ads on it?

After I moved and switched to HD, I decided to cancel Tivo altogether. I'm now using Time Warner's DVR and while it's not the Mac interface of DVRs, it gets the job done. I have it set to record the 5 or 6 shows I want it to and it does it. Why do you need a Tivo interface for that? And why pay an extra $12/month for it?

The only reason I'm looking at Tivo HD now is because of TivoToGo. And that's only the potential of TivoToGo since it doesn't work with Tivo HD yet. And we all know that "coming soon" in Tivo parlance can mean months to a year from now.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[demon]

Frequently TiVo fills its drive with a bunch of stuff that is largely uninteresting - that then needs to be deleted.

Er, did you ever bother to thumbsup/thumbsdown *anything*? If you did, the TiVo would start molding its choices based on your preferences. Also, the TiVo Suggestions are the first thing to go when space is needed for a chosen recording - you should never, ever need to delete them. For me, it's always recording something that's fairly close to my tastes, so I'm perfectly happy to leave it on.

HD DVR - 1080i(p?) recording. 160 GB drive. Two tuner record and watch capability. Show listings. No advertisements in the UI. And it comes with HDMI Out and Optical audio out of the box. All for the fabulous low price of 5.95/mo with no money down. As an added bonus, it requires only three cables to hookup to a good HD TV - HDMI, Power Cord and Coax feed from the cable company.

Funny, that's the same set of connections I use to connect my Series3 - Ethernet, video out to receiver, cable in (and antenna for OTA NTSC/ATSC, which that cableco box won't record - there are channels your cableco may not pull in that might have something you'd like), and power. Also, I hope you like returning that cableco DVR every couple of months when it craps out on you again. Search around - the Moto and SA DVRs have lots of problems, and lots of customers who have used them and hate them because they're constantly breaking for no apparent reason. Is losing all your saved shows every month or two okay with you? Hope so, because it'll probably be a way of life.

I fail to see how TiVo can possibly remain relevant in the face of this overwhelming opposition. In my mind there is no way that that $300 and a monthly service fee can compete with the Cable guys option. As a personal point of irritation, paying for a service (apart from TV, which is a whole separate conversation) and then being advertised to is simply unacceptable.

Because they manage to still provide a value proposition - they offer a box that (*gasp*) works, without constantly breaking, that gives you some actual choice in how you want to watch TV, less ads than most current cableco DVRs, the ability to watch TV from OTA sources if you choose, TiVo suggestions (which I and some other people find handy), Season Passes (yes, I know some cableco DVRs have something similar, which seems to be almost universally poorly implemented and all but broken)... every time I use my TiVo I find a reason to be happy with it.

My thought for TiVo when I made the switch is that TiVo needs to exit the hardware business ASAP and start licensing their technologies to the cable companies. I imagine a model similar to Direct TV would be good. The cable boxes that I've gotten from RCN and Comcast both could use some UI improvements (RCN is def. not as good as Comcast).

The cable companies don't want to pay an outside firm like TiVo, because they think they can do it for cheaper - the problem is, the boxes they provide kinda suck. Go do a little searching, and see all the bad reviews actual customers have given the different cableco DVRs. Yet they keep trying, and somehow managing to do worse, not better.

Either that or sell me a box and don't ask me for any more cash.

Sony and LG made boxes like that for awhile - HD DVRs even. They stopped making them. Why? No one bought them. No one wanted them. They're still available on sites like eBay, but they're still a far cry from TiVo.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The "intelligent" recording is rarely that. Frequently TiVo fills its drive with a bunch of stuff that is largely uninteresting - that then needs to be deleted. Great more work to make room for shows I *do* want to watch. Of course there is the auto delete feature but it doesn't make room if you want to record something.


I'm not sure what kind of Series 2 you had, but mine happily and automatically deletes any programs that it has recorded 'on spec' when it needs the space to record one of my selections. "Intelligent" recording is kinda bogus, but it works a lot better if you use the 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' buttons...but I'm sure you knew that.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Dun Malg]

The "intelligent" recording is rarely that. Frequently TiVo fills its drive with a bunch of stuff that is largely uninteresting - that then needs to be deleted. Great more work to make room for shows I *do* want to watch. Of course there is the auto delete feature but it doesn't make room if you want to record something. Sorry, I gotta call either "Troll" or "Idiot" here. Tivo doesn't keep shows unless you specifically tell it to. In the absence of those specific orders, when it needs space it will first delete the "suggestions", then start deleting the oldest programs you've recorded. What you describe is impossible, unless you are repeatedly actively flagging stuff "save until I delete".

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

Use case - your DVR is full (some suggestions and others flagged), and you are watching a show and you want to record it. Try to save and Tivo will tell you you don't have enough room and you'll need to delete things.

I also found that it would not record things on spec as frequently when your drive was nearly full.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

I don't exactly expect you to see my line of reasoning here, you after all spent 800 dollars on your series 3 box. lol.

I'm glad the handy recommendation feature worked well for you. I'm quite familiar with thumbs and made judicous use of them. However, TiVO and I just could never really get on the same page. Although one time it did record Duke of Hazard and Knight Rider and I was pretty happy about that. I still won't forgive it for screwing up the BSG recording schedule.

Overall, I just found TiVo not worth 800 bucks for a brick that won't work unless I continue paying for it.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

Wow, someone who gets what I'm saying. Thanks for the support lol.

Yeah, those are some cool ideas. I think if TiVo offered more than suggestions and recording it might be pretty compelling. As you pointed out the future enhancements need to be tv focused and less self serving

Some of the features addded when I was a customer were ads, music, picture gallery and shopping. But alas TiVo couldn't actually play any of my music because it was stored in a real format (AAC). I had to call them about that. As for pictures, are you mad? I have a computer monitor for that. And shopping is just asanine. Have you tried entering credit card info with the remote? I think though that most of these were a problem because they aren't actually centered around what TiVo is good at - watching, and recording TV.

You should send your suggestions to TiVo.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Zebra_X]

That sucks about comcast - I switched recently to RCN and they have no ads in the interface. Though, their interface probably makes for better screen shots than it does an actual application.

As far as suggestions go - they just never worked well for me. I think maybe I'm in the minority. I usually watch movies as opposed to shows so that doens't help.

Support was a real pain for me. The first time I had to deal with them was over the wireless "g" adapter that was misrepresenting it's actually transfer speed. I called them and they confirmed that the TiVo wasn't as fast as the adapater. The second time was the music upgrade. I gave the feature a try but turns out they didn't support AAC (non-drm), so I couldn't play any of my music. Great. The final time was to cancel and it took 20 minutes+ and a small inquisition about why it was that I was leaving TiVO.

Holy crap! Look at all the articles I get with my magazine! And I'm actually paying for physical transportation on the subway.

With TiVo you pay for... what exactly? TV LISTINGS! It's a stupid file with 2 mb of data that gets updated a couple times a month. Honestly, what does that REALLY cost TiVO? www.notsomuch.com

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[sgtrock]

You are the _only_ Tivo owner that I've ever talked to or read a post from who has complained about this. This includes Series 1, 2, and 3 owners. Everyone else has Tivos who automatically purge material to make room for new choices. Heck, it was one of Tivo's original selling points!

If you really experienced this issue then you should have returned your box immediately for a replacement. It was definitely not performing to spec.

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[therealalcaron]

Actually, I spent $400 on my series 3 box. Not that your argument would be valid even if it was true. Thanks for being dismissive though. :)

Re:Just doesn't make sense

[Mr2001]

Use case - your DVR is full (some suggestions and others flagged), and you are watching a show and you want to record it. Try to save and Tivo will tell you you don't have enough room and you'll need to delete things. If your TiVo really was behaving that way, it was defective. Mine are always full, and they never complain that there isn't enough room for a new recording.

I didn't just get lucky or find some secret option - that's how TiVo is designed to work, and it's how everyone else's works. New recordings push old recordings off into the bit bucket, in the order of (1) recently deleted stuff, (2) suggestions, (3) your own recordings that have expired.

I also found that it would not record things on spec as frequently when your drive was nearly full. Correct, suggestions will only be recorded when you have empty space to fill. This is done to enforce the priority order above: your own recordings always take precedence over suggestions, so if recording a suggestion would require deleting one of your recordings, it won't happen.

Additional data brings sense...

[ivan256]

All for the fabulous low price of 5.95/mo with no money down.

Maybe I can help shed some light on this for you. $5.95 isn't what every cable company charges. Where I live, Comcast charges $14.95 for the DVR and Verizon charges $12.99. Additionally, Verizon only charges a one-time $3 fee for cable cards. So for a small initial cash outlay I can get a better user interface, higher reliability, fewer restrictions, more features (can your cable box play media files off your PC?) and upgradeability. If Comcast or Verizon charged $5.95/month for an HD DVR it would be a harder decision.

Re:Additional data brings sense...

[Zebra_X]

"Small initial cash outlay"

So $300.00 is small? It's 1/2 the price of an ok second TV. Or 25/mo. added to your existing cable bill. On top of that it's 16.95 a month - still two dollars more, and for what? software updates and tv listings? What is TiVO *really* giving you for 16.95/mo. that didn't already come with the box you bought?

I also have no idea how much the dual cable cards are going to cost from a cable company - but it's probably not super cheap (FiOS is available in very limited areas) Can you get two of them? You will need two to record two channels.

All in for a 1 year contract: $41.95/month.

That's roughly the price of a Direct TV subscription. o.O

Re:Additional data brings sense...

[ivan256]

Yes, $300 is small. At least it is from my perspective. I say that in the context of all the additional features I listed. That is less money than the TV, less than the receiver, less than the speakers, less than two of the video game systems.... In context it is not a very expensive device.

I only pay $12.95/month for my Tivo service. That price is available to everybody if you're willing to commit to multiple years of service. If you're going to spend a few hundred dollars on the box, chances are you're going to use it for more than a year, so that's a no-brainer. It's also similar to the commitment you'd make signing up for satellite service. You can get the price down to $8.31/month if you're willing to pre-pay. You get additional discounts with multiple tivos. Neither Comcast nor Verizon offer discounts if you get multiple DVRs from them, in fact Verizon bumps the price up to $19.95/month/DVR if you get more than one and want them to work together. I do have two cable cards, and there is no monthly fee for them from Verizon. From Comcast, the first one was free and the second cost $2.95/month...

I don't know where you're getting $41.95/month... Are you dividing the cost of the box out over a single year? My first Tivo lasted me 7 years. Why should I expect my current Tivo to only last one in a price comparison. Shall I figure in the cost of my TV across a single year too? It cost *way* more than the Tivo.

Anyway, in summary: With Verizon, Tivo costs slightly more if you only have a single DVR, but you get much higher quality and more features. With Comcast, you actually save money with a Tivo over Comcast's default DVR (though it will take years to recover the initial investment), and you still get the higher quality and more features.

Versus the mythical (or perhaps not in your area) $5.95/month DVR, sure, you should probably go with the cable co's DVR. I actually agreed with you on that. So what was your motivation for pushing this argument further?

Re:Additional data brings sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even eask. He's the same kind asshat who bitches about $100 for an OS for a PC. Blow ....

Good timing (maybe)

[Schnapple]

For various reasons I won't go into here, I still haven't jumped on the HD Bandwagon yet. All my TV's in my house are SD. As luck would have it, the 80GB single tuner Series2 downstairs is starting to die - the hard drive occasionally makes clicking noises, and the screen freezes when this happens. So if that thing bites the dust, I figure I can pick up one of these guys.

Which then raises the question - am I right in thinking that it will work with my current all-SD setup? I figure within the next year I'll be diving into HDTV so it will be nice to have the HD TiVo in place, but will it really work?

Re:Good timing (maybe)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just replace the hard drive and keep going. There are places to get the drive image for your model. I got a SVR-2000 (Series 1) that has had two drives die. Lifetime subscription? still going strong baby. I love my TiVo.

Re:Good timing (maybe)

[LanMan04]

Just replace the hard drive, it's REALLY quite an easy process. Check out InstantCake, which enables people who aren't command-line wizards to easily replace TiVo hard drives. Costs $20.

http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake .cfm

Re:Good timing (maybe)

[crumley]

If it is outside of warranty, just replace the hard drive yourself. Or call up TiVo, they will probably swap out your dying one for a refurbed SD TiVo fro cheap. Of course if you really are going to go HD, then it might make sense to switch, but prices will probably drop even more by then.

Re:Good timing (maybe)

[Anonymous Coward]

The others are right in that you can just replace the HDD (generally with something bigger!)

However, yes, both the Series3 and the new HD have composite and S-Video out (or will scale down to 480i over component), so they will work with your SD televisions.

I would LOVE to rent a TIVO

[queenb**ch]

I wish I could rent a TIVO. The user interface on the TIVO far exceeds almost everything on the market. I don't know that I'd rent another company's DVR. I've used them at friend's houses and haven't been impressed.

2 cents,

QueenB.

Monthly Fee

[s31523]

When I bought the TiVo series 3 I thought I would just use it as a VCR, and not get the monthly subscription. Nope, the unit disables all DVR features unless it is activated. I imagine the new one will do the same... If TiVo gets rid of the subscription and/or lowers it significantly they might be able to hang on. I am using TiVo for now, but after the year is up I am selling the darn thing and getting away from them.

Re:Monthly Fee

[antdude]

Ditto. This is why I avoid hardware DVRs like TiVo. Currently, I use a computer but it is not super reliable and things break with software, drivers, etc. I just want a dedicated hardware DVR without its subscription. I only get analog and digital TV feeds OTA since I don't have cable and satellite TV services.

Certainly agreed.

[capitaladot]

CableCARD is a kludge, at best. CableLABS was allowed by its owners to poorly implement something, conveniently providing an excuse for the MSOs to complain to FCC et al about supposedly difficult to implement interoperability requirements. Yes, DVB would have been much better. Sadly, it isn't what has come to market, many thanks to Time Warner, Viacom and their ilk.

Re:Certainly agreed.

[HTH NE1]

Except didn't it start this month that cable companies could no longer provide all-in-one boxes and had to start using boxes that use CableCARDs? This was to force them to rely on them and thus make sure they work for everyone. (Due to the lack of bi-di cards, the on-demand and PPV communications would be handled by the box portion.)

Re:Certainly agreed.

[demon]

Yes, the integration ban did start as of July 1st - all new deployed boxes (cablecos may continue to reuse already-deployed boxes) *must* use CableCARD (or some form of separable access control - DCAS is supposedly coming, but it's nowhere near deployable yet). However, CableCARD most certainly supports bidirectional communications - it's CableLabs that won't license a device for bidirectional communication, at least not unless it runs OCAP. Read this to find out why OCAP is evil.

Unfortunately, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a standard QAM tuner is useless at this point. There's almost no programming in the clear to view. Go ahead... hook up a QAM tuner to Comcast or Verizon FIOS. You'll find about 8 QAM channels. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it's "mostly useless".

ATSC is great, fantastic, *if you can actually get OTA hi-def channel*. And of course, ATSC doesn't help you with ESPN, HBO, and other cable channels.

Re:Unfortunately, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get about 10-15 over clear QAM, mainly the local rebroadcasts in both HD and SD, a bunch of low-tier SD channels (Lifetime, Disney, etc...sadly not Cartoon Network or Comedy Central, but even an SD ESPN or two), and a few HD channels like MHD, TNTHD, and INHD (now MOJO).

Now, I can't guarantee that the CO won't decide to change the non-rebroadcast channels to encrypted, and I have to keep up with the occasional frequency reassignment, but it definitely depends on your local provider and what they've done. SDV is the big problem looming on the horizon, not encrypted QAM.

The real problem...

[capitaladot]

... is the lack of digital rebroadcast of most channels in most markets. On Comcast in Indianapolis, for example, only premium channels (not just movie stations, but tiered offerings like MTVs >2, BBC America, extra History channels, et cetera) are carried over QAM. Basic cable is still simply analog, and is just tuned over analog by the converter boxes. The MSOs are being miserly with their spectrum, from what I've seen, and probably won't switch to all QAM until they're mandated to do so. I think they may have been thus-required, but the ruling in question escapes ready recall. Here's to hoping that "in the clear" QAM basic cable is coming soon to head-end near you.

Wait, does that mean...

[lilomar]

...that I could get the TiVo card and use it on my Ubuntu laptop?

(I hate you broadcom.)

series 3 weak??? why?

[HelloKitty]

from the article:

>> It really makes the Series 3 look weak.
>> Or put another way, it makes the Series 3 into the boutique device it really is.

WTF are they talking about? it's got 90GB less hard drive space, no glo remote, no THX, and no OLED.
What about this $300 unit is better than the $700 series 3? they don't even qualify this?

is it the SATA? whee... who cares. you can hack the series 3 anyway.
Maybe it's the price. $300 certainly is better...

I feel your pain!

[Medievalist]

Frustrating is an understatement. I can't even get myth to change channels! My 10-year-old showed me how to do that from the keyboard, and since then I haven't bothered with the remote... I like to switch back and forth between the web and TV so I have a keyboard on my lap anyway.

Re:I feel your pain!

[vfrex]

Oh I can make it think its changing channels with keyboard or remote. But it never actually goes to a new frequency.

Re:I feel your pain!

[Medievalist]

On the KB, you have to hit enter after you've found the channel you want (I didn't figure that out, my kid showed me).

But that should not be needed on the remote so I'm afraid I'm just as puzzled as you are... p'raps you should look here. If you are outside the USA apparently there's some special mojo involved.

Re:series 3 weak??? why?

[Arcady13]

The only thing better about this box is the price. Everything else is lacking in some way. But not enough that it will keep me from buying one of these for my house. I already have a Series3, which I upgraded to 500gb. I also want an HD box in my Den, and I don't need a glo remote or THX or the OLED for that room. This new box is perfect for my second HD TiVo. The only thing I'll do is upgrade the drive to a decent size. I can just re-use the 250gb I pulled out of the Series3...

MythTV Question?

[TeamSPAM]

Does or will MythTV work with hardware that supports CableCard? I've never found a really good answer for this or the answer is in the negative. Leaning me towards buying one of the new TiVo HD boxes.

Re:MythTV Question?

[elrous0]

Does or will MythTV work with hardware that supports CableCard?

The concise answer is to this question is a simple "No." But I'm sure if you go onto a MythTV message board and ask that question, you'll get a dozen responses from programmers who came up with really complicated, illegal hacks to do it. They will then call you a baby killer and say terrible things about your mother for daring to insinuate that there is anything their beloved MythTV can't do.

Re:MythTV Question?

[BLKMGK]

Considering that the CableCard hardware requires some sort of handshake and authorization done by the tech installing it I'm betting that no you won't even find illegal ways of turning it on. CableCard was SUPPOSED to make access to cable content easier, thank you FCC, instead it was turned into an opportunity for the cable companies to screw us yet again. Myth is going to have a very hard time surviving when STBs are no longer used and QAM only supports the same stuff you can get OTA. I think that sux but I see no way for anyone to fight the media companies on this right now. I guess we can all hope IPTV takes off...

Sigh... DirecTV

[Stele]

Now if I could just hook this thing up to my 5 LNB DirecTV....

Those if you with the non-Tivo DirecTV DVR will understand.

Re:Sigh... DirecTV

[demon]

And let me guess, you're one of the poor bastards with an HR20? It's a shame DirecTV thought they could somehow do better than TiVo...

Re:Sigh... DirecTV

[Stele]

Yes - and the ONLY reason I got one was so I could record HD locals (Lost, The Office, Heroes, etc). I'm situated JUST RIGHT that my roof-top OTA antenna almost, but not quite, entirely fails to pick these stations reliably.

Everything else goes on the HD DirecTivo. At least until they launch these other 100+ HD channels. save me then!

'VCR' with a harddrive?

[honestmonkey]

So maybe someone knows: Is there a box that does this? That is, a "VCR" with a hard drive instead of tape? That's all I really want. No monthly anything, I just don't watch that much TV. I just want to say "start recording for an hour at 8pm on Monday". It would be nice if it were HD, and maybe have two tuners (I have basic cable and an antenna for local HD channels).

I don't want to build a MythTV box, or buy a Windows solution or really even have another computer. My solution now is to download stuff off of Bittorrent and burn it to a RW DVD. However, the quality is hit or miss, and the sound doesn't always sync up (and Virtual Dub can't always fix this). And I'm probably breaking some sort of law.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[HTH NE1]

Is there a box that does this? That is, a "VCR" with a hard drive instead of tape? That's all I really want. No monthly anything A used Series1 TiVo will do this. Best bet is a Philips-brand TiVo that is not also DirecTV receiver. Check the pawn shops. Though it will need to make periodic calls to update its clock, that service is free (though possibly long distance if 1-800 access isn't grandfathered).

Three of my TiVos are Philips Series1, and one of them (the 20hr) has never been signed up for service.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[antdude]

Are those old models still sold in local retail stores? Or are they only available on eBay, garage sales, etc.?

Someone else suggested I get a DVD recorder and use it like a VCR. Then, isn't there a limitation if I record HDTV that takes up a lot of disk space and also has problems in recordings (like skippinng?)?

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[TriggerFin]

You can go to your favorite online shop and buy a new DVR that has no subscription service and no telephone calls to make, yes.

I've a box (haven't the brand name in mind now) with a good size hard drive and a built-in DVD-RW (or is it +RW?) that pulls listings off the cable and offers manually scheduled recording in addition to automatic recording.

It does NOT do HDTV, it has only one tuner, and frequently needs to be left turned off at night to get updated listings. It also won't tune to channels above 99. Looking through the listings is slow, and it sometimes takes a couple minutes to do "something" when I turn it on.

It doesn't inteface with my PC in any way, and I managed to lock it up a few weeks back by recording a channel (in 12-hour blocks) for five days straight and watching everything it recorded whenever I was awake (it does have a 30s+ skip function and will play at about double speed with sound). Had to unplug it to get it working again.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[demon]

You're not going to be recording HDTV on a DVD recorder (the source might be HD, but what you'll watch afterward will be downconverted to DVD resolution). There have been HD DVRs with no monthly fees from the likes of Sony (the DHG-HDD250/500) and LG (the LST-3410A) - but the guide info is unreliable at best (using TVGoS pulled from an analog channel, and there's debate about whether they'll be able to pull it from an ATSC channel after analog shutoff) and the popularity of the boxes was low, so they stopped making them. I know the Sony unit is single tuner, as well - not sure about the LG.

You can still get these boxes used - sometimes new in box - off of eBay though. If you're really interested, check out the discussion threads on AVSForum, in the "HDTV Recorders" forum.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[antdude]

Dang, I guess I will stop looking at those DVD burners for HDTV stuff then. Are thees HDTV DVRs cheap? I don't care about TV guide. I got Internet for that and I am used to programming my TV shows schedules. ;)

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[demon]

See eBay, or another auction site, for pricing - looks like you might be able to get the DHG-HDD250 for sub-US$300 prices if you play your cards right, though it seems the LG unit is more expensive.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[honestmonkey]

Thanks, that actually looks like what I want, however, being the cheap guy that I am, I don't think I'm willing to spend $500-600 on them. There were only a few available on eBay that I saw. Hate to think how much they are retail.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[commodoresloat]

It does NOT do HDTV, it has only one tuner, and frequently needs to be left turned off at night ... it sometimes takes a couple minutes to do "something" when I turn it on. It doesn't inteface with my PC in any way, and I managed to lock it up a few weeks back ... Had to unplug it to get it working again. Wow - sounds great! Where do I get one? This sounds like more fun than my Windows 98 box!

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[demon]

I've seen DHG-HDD250s for under US$300 on eBay; you should be able to get one for that kind of price on there without too much trouble. They're not $100, no, but that's about as cheap as you're going to get an all in one box that can record HD for (that you own - I exclude cableco HD DVRs because they pretty universally suck). The Sony even supports CableCARD - though only SCards, as it's a single tuner rig.

Re:'VCR' with a harddrive?

[antdude]

Thanks. I will check them out after my VCR dies or whatever and when I get a digital TV (still using a 20" CRT TV).

upgrade from old tivo box?

[riceboy50]

I'm wondering if they would allow me to swap this into my current subscription on a Series 2, or whether I have to buy a new subscription with it and end my current one (read: sign a new contract ala mobile phone providers).

Okay, Now Questions That Matter

[Nom du Keyboard]

Okay, time to ask the only two questions that matter:

1: How do I enable the 30-second forward skip?

2: Are these the ones Comcast will be rolling out to their subscribers?

Re:Okay, Now Questions That Matter

[tim1724]

1: How do I enable the 30-second forward skip?

select, play, select, 3, 0, select ... same as any other TiVo. It will stay in effect until you reboot (or you can enter the code again to disable it, but why would you want to do that?)

Re:Okay, Now Questions That Matter

[jgabby]

The answer to #2: No. Comcast will not, as far as I can tell, be rolling new Tivo specific boxes out. They will be updating their existing boxes to run Tivo software, and a relatively limited Tivo software at that. The demo I've seen ran pretty slowly, didn't support the Live Guide EPG style. It did have swivel search. But in the end, Tivo software on an ugly Motorola box... yay?

not quite

[hawk]

>SD is roughly 480i. That's 640x480, 60 interlaced frames per second.

>640 * 480 * 60 * 0.5 = 9,216,000 pixels/second

Are you using SD for Svideo or "standard" definition. If standard definition, you're *way* off.

NTSC has 525 lines 30 times a second, interlaced for 60 half frames. That creates about 400-450 usable lines--this doesn't create a big error.

However, the pixel limit is limited by the color subcarrier at 3.58 MHz. Color is handled by phase shifts in that signal, so the limit is around 7.16 pixels/second--from which you have to pay for horizontal and vertical retrace.

Remember the purplish tint to Apple ][ and ][+? That's because they were pushing against the color subcarrier. (The rev 8 [?] and later motherboards, including the //e, shut off the subcarrier during text). They managed extra colors (8 bits produced six pixels in six colors) by slightly shifting the pixels in time. Anyway, given the amount of overscan on color televisions at the time, this gave a 280 pixel/line limit--but this did leave space to the left & right (though not much on most televisions of the time). Today, you could fit somewhat more.

PAL and SECAM give similar results.

hawk

Also, at the rate you quote, there would be problme

Re:not quite

[jonnythan]

NTSC is not the same as standard definition digital cable, but you are of course quite right.

My Motorola DCT 6412 is C*rap Also

[Nom du Keyboard]

The only think keeping me with Comcast right now (I'm on my 4th Motorola DCT 6412-III in 2.5 months) is the promise of a Comcast TiVo box to come and replace it. All the problem of the user with the Moto DCT 3xxx series I've had as well. My problem is that I'm in one of Comcast's smallest service areas (reported 85,000 customers), and we're not likely to see the new boxes soon enough!

useless until some things are actually enabled

[Zed2K]

Wake me when they actually enable the esata port and allow multiroom oh and when multistream cable cards are actually available. Until then this (like all other tivo products) are useless to digital cabletv subscribers.

Re:useless until some things are actually enabled

[demon]

Wake me when they actually enable the esata port

I have a Series3 HD, with a 500 GB eSATA drive plugged into it. It's loaded to the max with all kinds of HD content. Is this just my imagination? It says I have 98 hours of HD capacity... dunno, I suppose it's possible.

and allow multiroom

Okay, that's not out there yet... I've heard rumblings that the next software release may finally include MRV and TTG.

oh and when multistream cable cards are actually available.

Most cable companies have already moved to MCards - since the integration ban took effect at the start of the month, they're now required by the FCC to use CableCARD set-tops for new deploys, and they're not going to dick around with two SCards for those. Also, the two major cable infrastructure vendors, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta, killed their SCard lines and are now only making MCards. If your cableco is holding out on you, if you buy a TiVo, call up TiVo - they'll bring down a little FCC hellfire on them to get 'em up to speed.

Until then this (like all other tivo products) are useless to digital cabletv subscribers.

Up until I moved, I'd had two CableCARDs in my Series3, watching and recording material from HDnet, HDnet Movies, DiscoveryHD, and the HD locals. It was anything but useless to me.

Re:series 3 weak??? why?

[demon]

Or get an eSATA drive, plug it in, reboot, hold Pause till the light comes on, enter 6, then 2. Wait a bit, and presto - more disk space.

Re:series 3 weak??? why?

[carlivar]

Maybe it's the price.

Yes. It's the price.

TIVO rocks but could be better

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought an HD Tivo when they first came out. The Series one I had still worked great but I finally wanted HD (which is awesome, BTW). It was pricey but if you're that into money you wouldn't be wasting time watching TV anyway, you'd be at work :-) The only things that sucks about it is that you can't get anything off of it, even if there is no legal reason not to. I only record OTA unencrypted, and yet I can't dump it to a computer to take on airplanes or whatever. I have absolutely no idea why this is that way... I can't even figure out why Tivo has a financial interest in not doing it. They can't be sued over it, it's unencrypted OTA, so it is legal for them to make a device that allows you to copy it. They won't lose advertising revenue, they don't disenfranchise any potential partners (cable) that want their content locked down, etc.

So if anyone from Tivo reads this, WTF? Why do you (and everyone else) make crippled products?
I bought yours because it is the best, but it could be so much better....

To the people bitching about Tivo's ads /etc., I don't know how you stand to be alive if you are that sensitive to advertising.
It is barely noticable compared to every other commerical medium (newspaper, radio, internet, and TELEVISION).
If you don't like it, STFU and go read a book :-)

Re:TIVO rocks but could be better

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine Tivo2Go is taking so long due to the software and their legal requirements. They have to appear to be making good faith efforts that when they allow their customers to content-shift that it won't appear on P2P networks or given to friends, etc.

Re:This new unit almost matches last years Dish un

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this modded troll? Was the mod a Tivo fanboy?

The specs on the Dish 622 are as good as this new Tivo.

Re:This new unit almost matches last years Dish un

[GuyverDH]

Must have been a fan boy, or one of Tivo's employees, or possibly one of their lawyers...

Either way..

I stand by my comment.

The Tivo is almost as good as the 622, which is over a year old.

Re:This new unit almost matches last years Dish un

[Overzeetop]

No, it's a troll because it can work with multiple cable providers (can your 622 work with multiple satellite providers?) and more importantly it has the TiVo(R) interface. I know that seems like a dead horse argument, but it really makes a difference. TiVo is a bit like Apple (with all the fanboi problems, too) - it just works. It may not do what some enthusiasts want, but what it does, it does well - and with sparkling simplicity.

I've tried some of the PC (win/linux) versions of DVRs, have seen some non-TiVo DVRs in action, and currently have two DTiVos. Based on what I've seen, I'm probably going to dump DirecTV when they turn off my TiVo and just go back to OTA and packaged video products. The only weakness in that plan is the lack of ESPN - I'm not sure I could make it through football season without that.

Anyway, as with all DVRs, specs mean almost nothing - the usability is the first item on any list. If that weren't the case, we'd all be running myth or MCE, or we'd be happy with whatever the cablecos send us (you do seem to fall in the latter category).

Re:This new unit almost matches last years Dish un

[GuyverDH]

Why would I want to overpay a cable provider for my service?

As to the TiVo interface, I was never fond of it to begin with. Rather klunky in my opinion.

It makes a difference in that it won't work with anyone's satellite service, unless you're connecting after the fact.

The other neat thing about the 622, is that if I'm watching a show, and decide that someone else might like to see it, I can hit record, and it can record the entire show, even if I'm 90% of the way through it. It automatically records whatever channel each tuner is on, just in case you might want to do this. The only place this doesn't work, is on an HD channel, where you are limited to the previous 15 minutes of the show.

The 622 is a very nice piece of equipment - I've only had 1 show that didn't record and that was due to a cable repair guy who didn't like that I had dish, cutting my satellite coaxial cable. Since I had security cameras placed around my house, I was recording his actions. I walked outside and told him he could put a new piece of coax in, and that I'd already called the cable company to report his actions. It was kind of funny to see the video of him cutting the cable on the local news channel, and yes, the guy lost his job.