Father John A

Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

I've been a long time Tivo fan. However I am now in the market for a new display. It has me wondering how Tivo can possibly fit in for me in the future.

For the present I will still be watching SD via normal cable but I know I will be upgrading to HD cable sometime in the future. This brings up a number of questions:

- Will Tivo still have the edge over cable HD DVRs? They are cheap and I assume (not ever having used one) almost as good an interface as the Tivo.

- If I were to opt for a Tivo HD, how would that work with my cable provider? Can I run my cable box/cable card through the HD Tivo? If not, isn't it going to be pretty obsolete?

- Tivo HD DVRs are expensive and the subs are equally bad. The SD DVR from my cable company is a mere $6/month. I imagine the HD version will be comparably priced when it's available. How can Tivo compete with that?

The point is, I'd like to have an HD Tivo AND HD Cable AND be able to use my new display remote. Is there any hope for any of this or is it better to just let the cable company provide it all?

Fr. John

corona13

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

there is an article in the march issue of HT magazine that addresses your question.

They blast motorols's DVR, but give great reviewes to the SA 8300 HD DVR. They say tivo is far and away the better option, but at $800 plus monthly service fee, you would have to be a DVR nut to pay that.

I jsut dont see the value. It doesn't imporve the audio or video. based on what I read, the tivo has better user interfaces and is easier to use.

Robert_J

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

Don't assume that a cable company DVR will even be close to Tivo. Read some reviews on non-Tivo DVR's. Tivo users hate them.

You rent two series 1 cable cable cards or a single series 2 cable card from your cable company. They are installed in your S3 Tivo. You can also connect the appropriate antenna for OTA digital channels It records all of the channels you subscribe to and receive via antenna. It is not compatible with external boxes like HD cable or HD satellite boxes.

More features. Streaming music/video from the internet and other Tivos boxes. Very stable OS - no need to reboot. Very accurate recording algorithm - rarely misses a program that it is supposed to record. Upgradable - 1TB+ of storage.

If you have Comcast, you may be able to get a Motorola DVR box from them running Tivo software. Like DirecTV did with their implementation of Tivo, some of the more advanced features are not there. But the most important DVR features work great according to reports.

-Robert

Joseph DeMartino

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

Is there hope for TiVo? Yes. But probably not as a hardware company/service provider. The hope for TiVo lies in licensing their software to others.

I have the SA8300HD DVR. If it is getting good reviews compared to the Motorola box, I shudder to think that what is like because the SA sucks. There isn't a day that goes by the I don't pine for my 3 TiVo series 2s. But the fact is I have two, 2-tuner SA8300HDs recording tons of mostly HD content every week for a fraction of what a single series 3 would cost. So I put up with the clunky interface.

My cable company (Adelphia) was recently absorbed by Comcast. Word is that we're switching over to Motorola boxes with modified TiVo software this summer. OTOH the TiVo reps at CES mentioned that they are working to port their software to the SA hardware as well, in part to make it easier to sell to other cable providers, so there's a chance I can keep my (not bad) hardware and get some much-improved software. (The SA at least supports HDMI-1, the Motorola only does DVI) Supposedly some of the other cable providers who are losing market share to satellite can see the advantage of replacing their crappy home-brew DVR software with a proven crowd-pleaser.

Anything has to be better than the current software. When Comcast converted all the Adelphia customers in my service area to the same channel line-up they offer in the rest of the country, I had to manually cancel and re-enter all of my "standing" recordings. (I won't dignify their crude "repeat recording" function with the name "Season Ticket", because it doesn't come close.) In all the years I owned TiVos I never had to manually fix my recordings because Adelphia rearranged their channel map. The box automatically remapped all the changes based on the information provided by Adelphia. Pity Comcast's box couldn't do the same with their own service.

Meanwhile I've heard that DirecTV may bite the bullet and come crawling back to TiVo. The reaction to their DVR has been horrible. The software is junk and the hardware isn't so good, either. My parents live with my brother-in-law and sister in a sprawling house a few miles from me. My folks each have a DirecTiVo - my dad's in their bedroom, a Christmas present the year they moved in, my mom's in her sitting room - her birthday present the following year. My sister got my brother-in-law a DirecTV DVR for his birthday last March. By that time they were no longer offering the TiVo units. The difference is night and day. I think its been replaced under warranty twice and it is still subject to random weirdnesses that never seem to afflict the TiVo.

I don't know if there's any truth to that rumor, but I know a lot of pissed off DirecTV customers who hope there is, and I'm sure some stockholders would like to know if what the company saved by switching is worth the customer-satisfaction hit they've taken. (Assuming the "savings" haven't been totally absorbed by what they're paying programmers to fix their lousy software, field techs to reinstall their hardware and losses from customers who have just had enough. Whatever they were paying TiVo was probably cheap by comparison.)

Regards,

Joe

My Home Theater

My DVD Collection

Stephen Tu

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

The quality of interface varies widely between different software platforms on the various cable DVRs. Some are reasonably close to Tivo in most core aspects (and actually better in some areas), others are reportedly fairly dreadful. The good thing about cable DVRs is the low upfront cost; for the price of just an installation fee + the monthly you can try it out a couple months to see if you can put up with whatever is offered by your provider.

Also Comcast + Cox have deals to deploy Tivo software on some of their boxes, that may become an option for you in some months depending on your location.

Robert_J wrote:
I wouldn't generalize for all DVR/software combos. Some Tivo users hate some of them. Other longtime Tivo users (like me) are reasonably satisfied with some of them, especially given the price we are paying for the box vs. a series 3.

Don't think in the long run they can; thus why they are pursuing the licensing deals.

I really think it's a mistake to make any equipment decision based on remotes. Any home enthusiast would be well served to take $110 or so to invest in a good universal remote, making the design of the OEM remotes irrelevant.

Charlie Campisi

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

This is off point from the OPs question, but I wanted to add it to Joe's post about directv and tivo. The last two months have been a rough one for the directivo hd dvr, the HR10. I'm committed to directv because of the nfl. Up until now, I've enjoyed the hr10 and tivo for ease of use and reliability. But two events have compromised that.

The first was a long awaited software update that was to improve the speed of the interface and add some other useability, primarily folders in the now playing list to organize recorded programs. Well, the update worked on both those counts, but it added some other problems, including audio dropouts in the digital stream of 10 seconds or so that happened most frequently on over the air broadcasts. If you like shows with dialogue, it was a big PITA. The second issue was that directv changed the guide data format. This destroyed the tivo's reliability. Many many programs in my house were not recorded or only partially recorded. What was once perfectly reliable was now suspect. We don't watch any programming live and this was a major annoyance. Both problems seem to have been resolved, but it took months before they figured it out. Combine those issues with the shaky on board tuners and the HR10 is appearing more outdated.

I'll probably be forced to go to the directv hd dvr when the nfl season ticket is converted to mpeg4 by directv, not to mention the promised national hd channels. I would hope that there may be a tivo option on the horizon, but it's a tough time to pick a good hd dvr solution. We have verizon fios in my neighborhood and they carry directv programming. That may be an option, but when I last looked into it, their pricing for multiple dvrs was high (per unit). We use 3 dvrs and nobody competes with directv's 6 bucks a month for as many dvrs as you can fit in your house.

I apologize again if I've gone off course. Just wanted to add the perspective from the directv tivo side.

Father John A

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

After posting yesterday I discovered the cable card option with the Series 3. I'm loving the specs of that unit plus the option of staying with Tivo. I'm afraid though that my wallet will have me waiting quite a while (like I did with my first Series 2). I just can't see paying those prices (the DVR & atrocious subscription) for basically a single purpose computer with a cheap hard drive in it. I mean really, you could build up a Linux (isn't the Tivo based on it?) box for WAY less money than the Series 3 and it would be more powerful.

If it weren't for the Tivo service they'd have been dead by now.

Fr. John

Robert_J

Re: Is there any hope for TIVO? Can it really compete?

Except that it couldn't record all of the HD programming that you want. Right now there the only way to capture encrypted QAM HD channels via PC is with an HD capture card with component inputs. The last time I priced those, they started at $5,000. Soon you will have HD cards with cable card slots that will integrate into Vista and Media Center.

-Robert