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TiVo Announces High-Def Series3 DVR
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:00 AM
from the new-toys dept.
from the new-toys dept.
prostoalex writes "Catching up with the competition, TiVo is set to unveil a high-definition digital video recorder. The unit will feature dual tuners, 250 GB, and a hefty price sticker: 'The long-awaited product will be $800 and available in mid-September, the company said. Subscription fees for the TiVo service are separate ... TiVo officials attributed its long development time in part to waiting for certain technologies to mature and the lengthy process of getting industry-related approvals, such as for the set-top-box's two built-in CableCARD slots. CableCARD slots allow users to access digital programming from a cable TV provider without the need for a separate receiver. The Series3 HD box also represents TiVo's first major product upgrade since it released its networked Series2 DVR in 2002.'"
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News: TiVo Unveils Series3 HDTV DVR 309 comments
MegaZone writes "TiVo unveiled their new Series3 unit at CES yesterday. The Series3 is a digital cable ready box, capable of recording two programs simultaneously. It supports cable and antenna input, and it can handle digital or analog cable, digital ATSC, or analog NTSC broadcasts. CableCARD is used for digital cable, and it can utilize a single multi-stream card, or two single-stream cards. The system also sports 2 USB ports, 10/100baseT Ethernet, and an E-SATA port for external storage expansion. Video output is HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite, and audio is optical digital or RCA stereo."
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Entertainment: The Secret Origins of TiVo 151 comments
Davis Freeberg writes "TiVo is probably better known for their ad zapping technology than their television advertisements. In fact, other then a few lousy infomercials and a commercial that was rumored to be banned by the networks, TiVo has never really had much in the way of TV advertisements. Apparently though, one of TiVo's more rabid fans did some sleuthing and discovered a hidden easter egg video buried deep within TiVo's own website. The video itself exposes the true origins of TiVo's technology and how they got their hands on that ad zapping photon remote to begin with."
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bill_kress writes "According to Reuters, television studios are finally trying to target DVR viewers with advertising. The effort, however, seems rather backwards — They are extending the same exact image across the entire 30 second commercial so that TIVO Viewers will be forced to view at least one frame. Wouldn't it be better to add value to the viewing experience instead?" From the article: "The advert for its new drama 'Brotherhood' will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its "sales message" when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky+ and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs. Advertisers have been racing to find ways to get messages through as higher numbers of consumers watch TV programs when they want using such recorders, often skipping the commercials."
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800$ plus subscription?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:800$ plus subscription?? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Just got email from Tivo saying if I buy a new HD Tivo, for $199 they'll transfer my lifetime sub to the new HD unit. Offer appears to be good for purchases of new HD unit through 12/31/2006, and you must activate new service by 01/31/2006.
They will also allow your older Tivo to work no charge for service for 12 mos, after which you can deactivate it, or pay monthly on it.
I might do this....just to have HD content going while the issues
Re:Not quite (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Put DirecTV on notice. (Score:5, Interesting)
You are on notice, DirecTV. I chose you over cable because (Adelphia) cable is (more) evil and I like my TiVo, and the multitude of hacks available. Now that you are charging me more, taking away my TiVo, and your TiVo has less funcationality than a real one, cable just may win out.
$800 is a chunk of change, but the price will come down eventually. I'd be happy in the $400 range if I ended up with real value in the end.
Re:Put DirecTV on notice. (Score:4, Interesting)
Same here. I have a DirecTiVo and it was very quickly clear to me that as much as I like DirecTV, I like my TiVo more. When my TiVo ceases to function (due to death, new channels I want to watch, whatever) I'm cancelling your service unless you offer a new Genuine TiVo I can purchase and use by then.
Dish Network: I've been getting mail from you every once and a while trying to get me to switch. Same thing applies. Give me a Genuine TiVo and when the time comes I'll go to you (since my local cable is horrid).
Parent
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MBCook: If your DirecTivo does die you can buy one on ebay for less than $50.
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I see a common theme here - the cable/dish company giving or renting you a Tivo, but not your actually paying $800 for one. I love TV, but TIVO wants me to have a cable subscription ($60-100/m with HD) pay $800 for a Tivo box, PLUS pay a monthly subscription fee to Tivo?
Please - if Comcast offers the Tivo box for rental -
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DirecTV has actually beaten TiVo to market with a pretty competitive feature set; yeah, it's not TiVo, but the $500 you won't be spending on the box, plus the $265 yearly you won't be spending on TiVo subscription fees ($13/mo) and cablecard rental fees ($10/mo ea.) will make a nice pillow.
- Dual tuners? Check.
- Dual ATSC tuners? Check. (they're not enabled yet, but
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I wouldn't expect less
- Dual ATSC tuners? Check. (they're not enabled yet, but the hardware's there)
Excellent. I hope the software upgrade to enable them get's more funding that the TiVo software did. I still don't have folders on my HR10-250. Or T2Go. Or Networking. Or TiVoWeb. Or MP3s. Or...
- 300GB SATA HD? check.
And this is better than a 250GB stock, or the ability to hack in a 500GB drive easily?
- External SATA jack for external storage space? check.
Is it active out of the box?
- Eth
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Screw that... if I can get HD channels recorded digitally via a real TiVo through cable sign me up. I hate the cable companies but not enough to give up my TiVo to stay with a satellite provider who obviously does not care about my business.
The funny thing is the piece of junk they try to sell you in p
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I called and actually eventually talked to a VP at DirectTV and at this time they have no intention of ever working with Tivo again.
Now, an interesting part was how difficult it was for me to actually cancel my account. It took 20 minutes on the phone to do it.
Here is how it went down:
Me: Um yes I need to cancel my account.
DTV: Ok, we are sorry to hear that, and are glad to help, may I ask why?
Me: Well, this is a long s
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Satellite? (Score:2)
I have DirecTV (which frankly because they stopped supporting my TiVo I will dump when the time comes). Now I know the Series 3 supports CableCARD but does not support satellite inputs. Does anyone know if it would be possible for DirecTV to make a "DirecTV CableCARD", possibly with some little external box to transform the signals from the DirecTV frequencies to cable frequencies?
In other words, is there some reasonable way where if they were interested DirecTV (or even Dish) could make a CableCARD compat
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But it's not out yet (just recently announced)...
E.
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Which is espeically pathetic because I would still pay the DVR fee if they TRIPLED it to the $15 a month that TiVo charges. That way, I could still have a TiVo and DirecTV would get an extra $10 a month. Even if they only doubled it. Heck, they could have raised the price to $6 a month.
But instead they lost me as a future customer (and many others) because they were greedy over $1 and decided to give people sub-standard equiptment (non-TiVos) to save $$$.
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I'm sure it's possible. But, it's not likely -- satellite companies are not required by the FCC (since they're not regulated by the FCC) to use them, so why would they implement a technology that would take away their hardware lock-in?
BTW, the cable companies fought the concept of the cable card for years, but finally lost out to the
Compatibility (Score:2)
Will it work with any variety of Satellite?
The thing about HD is that it REQUIRES a digital feed. Will the new Tivo act as a secure recipient of HDMI content or does it even have HDMI in? Is the output DRM encumbered HDMI or straight DVI / component?
At 800 bucks plus subscription, this thing better work with everything or Tivo will loose their shirts.
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To be used for...? (Score:2)
Tivo can't compete any more.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be very happy... (Score:2)
Don't feel bad, lots of people are perfectly happy with the base model.
Some of us just want more. This just the thing for those who do.
(Kind of odd really, me being a real fanboi over a CE item. I guess this must be what it feels like for Mac zealots.)
Like the Homermobile (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't bothered with a MythTV/MCE because TiVo was cheap (free after rebate for the 40GB model, quickly hacked with bigger HD) and was easy to use and good at what it does. Now if I want to upgrade it's priced right in line with these other technologies that offer more features. Tivo just isn't competitive anymore, especially once MCE supports CableCard.
I would buy this if.... (Score:2)
Other than that, Tivo is smoking something really stong to think $800 is a good price.
Looks about right... (Score:4, Informative)
And for all of the posts bitching about "$800 PLUS subscription!??!?!?", remember that this is a set-top box replacement. You already pay Comcast or [insert other cable behemoth here] $10/month for that POS DVR that they provide with a clunky unreliable interface. $2 more gets you a better interface, suggestions, downloadable content, more guide data, the ability to program over the internet, the ability to download shows to your laptop or other device, the ability to display slide shows, mp3 playback, mp3 streaming, podcast streaming, and so on and so on and so on. And that's not even including the features in the pipeline, like (official) storage upgrades and a ton of other unannounced projects.
For $3 more a month, bring me my TiVo. And as far as the $800 initial fee, if you can't afford it - just wait for the first round of rebates. Or do what I always do, upgrade when they offer unbelievably cheap factory refurb units. Every TiVo I've ever owned has been a refurb - and with proper cable surge protection and a Smart-UPS, my units have never failed me.
Re:Looks about right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, I pay $5 for HD service and another $5 for the DVR. But even if I'm paying $10/month for the DVR, I *don't* have to pay for the hardware up front and if something better comes along in a couple of years, I can jump ship. Plus, another poster stated just renting the cable card may cost $5-10 from your cable provider.
Let's look at this over 5 years:
Comcast cost = 5*12*$10 or $600.
TiVo cost: $800 + 5*12*$5 (cable card) + 5*12*$13 (TiVo service) or $800 + $300 + $780 or $1880
It seems to me that TiVo is three times more expensive over the reasonable life of the box. That may be worth it to some, but not to me.
Parent
Is it worth the extra cost? (Score:2)
Now with the series 3 you have a monthly fee and a
Already for sale on Tivo.com (Score:4, Informative)
According to TivoBlog, some Best Buy stores are taking preorders showing a delivery date of 9/17/06. There have also been rumors over the past few weeks that Best Buy and CircuitCity will have the Series3 Tivo in stock on the 17th or 19th.
Despite the heavy price tag, the need to rent 2 CableCARDs from my local Cable Company, and the expensive $12.95 Tivo monthly fee, I placed my order within a few minutes of Tivo making the change to their website. I bought one of the first 14-hour Tivos when they went on sale in 1999, and in all that time I have not seen another DVR that has a UI as good as the Tivo one. I finally abandoned Tivo in favor of a Cable Company DVR in 2004 when my local Cable Company started to offer HD programming. Finally Tivo is catching up 2 years later.
By the way, you can thank design firm IDEO [ideo.com] for many of the UI innovations of the Tivo (and early Macs as well).
How many dish network patents did they violate? (Score:2)
Only difference being, that the 622 has 2 Dish tuners, plus an off-air HD tuner.
You can record from both tuners, and watch either recorded content or off air on both outputs, totalling 4 concurrent i/o streams.
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That's what you get when there is a monopoly on the CableCARDs. If there were commercially available consumer versions of these then the price would be more reasonable from the outset. Unlike other posters seem to think, there will be no real reason for these to ever decrease in price, since there is essentially a cartel of suppliers who can set the price at whatever level they please.
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The CableCARDs are rented from the local cable company at something like $5 - $15/month.
The Tivo is essentially commodity hardware stitched together with solid software and a fantastic UI. As the cost of those commodity parts drop, so will the retail price of the Series3 Tivo.
In the past, Tivo has been willing to sell the hardware at a loss hoping to make up the cost with their $12.95/month service fee. It hasn't really worked out that well for them, so they are not willing
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I'm assuming you consider more as not being able to record about 75% of the HD content out there.
Re:That DIY HTPC just became economical! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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My question to manufacturers is why hasn't someone made a component in HD card?
That would cause quite a stir and be a boon for the DIYers. I think that is when I jump in on the MythTV bandwagon.
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sure you can!
Re:That DIY HTPC just became economical! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Time Warner in Houston offers all of it's programming over CableCARD. The technology isn't quite ready to support bi-directional features like on-demand, but it's coming.
We le
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more than adequate and won't require a separate card that has it's own
noisy fan.
Be mindful of things like vga ports when you buy your HDTV and you
won't even need HDMI or DVI outputs on your GPU.
Although even things like the pundit bookpc barebones systems have
that sort of thing built in too.
The whole "DRM" thing still give Tivo an edge at least for a little while.
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Which is precisely the reason why the Series 3 has built-in tuners and CableCard support. The Series 3 is your cable box.
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err.....DVR
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Agreed - although $2k was fine for the TV ;)
Free? When? Where? The best I can come up with is my Samsung Tivo/DVD player with a lifetime Tivo Basic subscription for free - which is basically just the programming guide. A cheap lease ($3-5/month) is more common. $800 is absurd.
Just figuring that ou