HD DirecTivo Hopes... (1 Viewer)

[Luke_Y]

Just to keep the light burning.
In this months The Perfect Vision , in Gary Merson's column "HDTV Insider" there is one sentance that holds hope.
"A DirectTV spokesperson told me recently that an HDTV TiVo would be shown at the January CES with delivery in 2003."
Thinking that they are now one company it would likely be a DirecTivo not a stand alone. So, lets just hope that the Tivo (now DirecTV) people were listening and it includes a terrestrial HD tuner that you can record from as well.

 

[Stephen Tu]

Huh? Since when are they one company? They are still separate entities. DirecTV administers billing and such for the DirecTivo receivers, but Tivo is still a separate company, and still in the standalone business.

I would bet though that the first HD-Tivo would be some sort of DirecTV/OTA combo. But I wouldn't want to lay any bets on a release date.

 

[Brae]

BTW, do you really think you can afford to record much HD onto the hard drive? If you are looking for competitive alternatives to, say D-VHS D-Theater then think again. At a maximum bit-rate of 28.2 Megabits per second recording ability in D-VHS D-Theater a 60-minute recording would consume about 12GB. Thus, a PVR with a 120GB drive would only be good for 10-hours of recordings.

The largest mass-production consumer hard drives are 200GB and cost about $300 (looking at NewEgg pricing). A couple of these hard drives and maybe you can get 33-35 hours, but I doubt a unit for under a grand would be likely.

Thus, the only option until drives for PVRs can large enough would be to either make the storage system tape-based (yuck, that's D-VHS all over agani), or reduce the bit-rate recoding to something less. No, although I do not like D-VHS (or even the idea of prerecorded content on D-VHS), I will admit there might be an interest in a D-VHS version of a PVR device, but this, IMHO, would have to be a case in which the PVR was about $500 for any serious market penetration will go for it.

BTW, I was under the impression that DirecTV is handling both the billing and customer/tech support for ONLY the DirecTiVo customers, and not all TiVo customers.

 

[Stephen Tu]

BTW, I was under the impression that DirecTV is handling both the billing and customer/tech support for ONLY the DirecTiVo customers, and not all TiVo customers.

Yes, isn't that exactly what I said?

 

[Jim Ferguson]

10 hours would do me just fine. I just want to be able to catch 3 or 4 movies that always seem to come on in the wee hours of the morning, and then watch them on the weekend, or the following evening.

 

[Brian Ruth]

I think that by the time HD is in 25% of American homes, the price on hard drives will come down enough to make this idea viable.
My guess is that we'll have to wait at least 4 years for that to happen, though.

 

[Brae]

Stephen, I was playing off of what Luke mentioned upon, which was HD DBS and not HD OTA. I thought that most people were after HD content along the lines or D-VHS D-Theater quality and not subthis below that. After all, if you are shooting for the moon why stop at halfway point?
Now, if you are willing to settle for less, and 19.6Mbps is less, then sure, an hour would be about 8.6GB. For an intro-class HD-PVR to suit your needs. I honestly do not know what the bit-rates are for DBS HD content and your 'likely' remark also assures me you do not know either.
Still, I found it dramatic that very, very few people bought into the prerecorded content initially made available in D-VHS D-Theater format, even with the spectacular quality 28.2Mbps offered, as the player alone listed for $2K alone. In fact, the market was so turned off that sales hadn't even started showing a pulse of life until it hit the $1K mark--that's some deep discounting!
Something has to be keeping their prices rather high, incomparison, and I'm wondering if it is not the integration of an HD decoder. Heck, even 5 year old HD DBS decoders are still selling for $350-550! When you add to that the cost of an HD encoder to record and then the storage costs the baseline for produceing the first product still is somewhat high.
Look, I am not knocking the idea. I would love to be able to have a HD-PVR that can record up to 28.2Mbps and sufficient capacity for 100 hours and be able to get that product for under $500 (something mass consumption will ultimately require), but I do not see that happening anytime soon.
Ask yourself this, what do you think the cheapist HD TiVo or Replay will cost and add to that the cost of the cheapist HD DBS receiver model released in 2002-3. Last time I checked the HD DBS models being released were starting at $550. If JVC modified their 30K for hard drives instead of D-VHS tape (JVC, you listening), that's still in the neighborhood of +$1500 under a heavily discounted scenario.
Please, let's advocate together. This way we can present a united front and not something smelling like DVD formats, hehehehe.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

DISH is currently scheduled to ship an HD-PVR in the spring.

Time Warner is beta-testing a Scientific Atlanta HD-PVR in Orlando.

Both, of course, are dedicated settop boxes that also act as regular receivers and are incompatible with other systems.

I can't see DirecTV not shipping one this year as well, if for no reason other than to lot let the competition make them look bad.

 

[Luke_Y]

Hi all, there were some questions about my "one company" statement. I thought DTV had absorbed Tivo when the service merged. The Msg. from DTV seemed to sound that way and the removal of "Tivo Central" along with the other changes is what made me think they were under one umbrella now. I am sure you guys are correct though and it's my error. To be honest when I read the Msg. from DTV I was mostly focused on the pricing info, and making sure I wasn't going to get screwed out of "lifetime" subscription and mirroring fees for additional units.

I think that by the time HD is in 25% of American homes, the price on hard drives will come down enough to make this idea viable. My guess is that we'll have to wait at least 4 years for that to happen, though.

I disagree and think that we will definitely see one this year. As Michael pointed out Dish/JVC will have a HDPVR out this spring, and there is already an HD cable PVR in homes. For DirecTV to not have something available this year would be bad business.

I do agree that the initial units will probably be limited to 10-12 hours of HD recording, but the original Tivo was limited to like 14 hours wasn't it? My hope is that we can still hack larger HDD into them as higher capacity drives become more affordable.

I also hold hope that a HD DirecTivo unit will include an OTA tuner. For this I am not as optimistic though as I know that the JVC/Dish model will NOT include an ATSC tuner.