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What's the dish that is going to have the HDTivo built in? (1 Viewer)

Ottis Fletcher

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When I got my HDTV a few months ago I went to Best Buy to pick up a progressive scan DVD player. I ended up talking to the guy for about 2 hours about home theater. He told me that Dish Network or Direct TV (I don't remember which) was releasing a receiver with a built in High Definition Tivo built in. Does anyone know when this would be hitting the market? Thanks.
 

Joe Szott

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They both are making them, available later this year. I would troll around at Xmas and see what both have available, take the best deal then.

Right now, you can get either HDTV or PVR (tivo) capability from DISH of DirecTV, these new receivers will be the first one to do both in the same box.
 

Ottis Fletcher

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If I get a dish soon, would I be able to get the Tivo separate later on down the road or would I have to buy a whole new receiver?
 

Christian Behrens

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The whole point is having the receiver and the PVR/Tivo in one device, because what happens is that the stream coming from the satellite is saved to hard disk, therefore there is absolutely no quality loss between live TV and watching a recorded show.

Thus, yes, you can get a HDTivo once it's available, but it also means it's a new receiver, and most likely it will not be mass-market cheap.

-Christian
 

Wayne Bundrick

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The Dish version is also not a TiVo. Hopefully there aren't any people who are asking for TiVo but are being sold something that is not TiVo.
 

Jeff Bamberger

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And it's not just that there isn't quality loss (heck, I record at Medium on my SA TiVO and that is fine for all but Sports). You are recording the raw digital stream, so there is no mpeg decoding/encoding involved. It is the same quality. Also, with the DirecTiVO, there are two tuners built in, so you can record two programs at the same time.

They could do this with a SA TiVO, but it would cost too much since they would have to engineer it with dual MPEG encoders/decoders, which would be lots of $$$$$s.
 

Joe Szott

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Ottis,

You would need to buy a whole new receiver. The reason I say wait is that 1st time subscribers get all kinds of price breaks and deals, like 2 receivers (1 with Tivo), free satellite dish, 2 room installation, and 1 month free for like $250. Once you are a subscriber, those deals go away. So the best deal you can get on DISH or DirecTV is the very first time you sign up for it.

That being said, you can do what I'll probably do. I have DISH now and when the HDTV DirecTV Tivo units hit later this year, I'm going to switch over. So I still get the deal (plus cabling/installation for a new room), and a new receiver fro minimum $$$. Only caveat for you would be each one requires that you remain a customer for 1 year to honor the free installation, dish, etc (so it would be next April before you could switch for no $$$ lost.)

You could also get a DirecTV Tivo unit now for $250 and use it for a year and then just buy a new HDTV DirecTivo receiver when they come available later, nothing wrong with that plan.
 

andrew markworthy

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We've had a system similar to the one you're describing in the UK for a couple of years now. Over here it's called 'Sky Plus' and it's brilliant (we have Tivo, but that's a different thing, and to the best of my knowledge, there's no integrated Tivo recorder/receiver available). The picture quality is, as has already been said, superb, and recording programmes, etc, is simplicity itself. The only downside is if you like to 'hoard' recordings and then watch a large number in a batch. The Sky Plus system 'only' records twenty hours (the US system may of course be different), but for my viewing habits, this isn't a problem.
 

Ottis Fletcher

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Thanks for the info guys. I just don't want to spend the money for receiver now and in a few months have the one with HD PVR built in.

Like many of you said it will be expensive, which I don't mind as long as it's under $1k. Could you guys give me some prices on the dishes that offer HD. Mainly the top tier monthly prices, how many HD channels, are the HD channels more money?
 

Dan Hitchman

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Pre-order prices may be right under $1,000 for the 921. The costs associated with this unit are supposedly due to the 250 Gigabyte hard drive in the chassis. You can record 40 hours of pure digital HD material (two different channels at once if you want; with many, many more hours of recording time for standard def. stuff) at the exact same quality as what you'd see live (and with full DD 5.1 support). It is more like a basic computer with dual HD tuners and a really large hard drive, not a TIVO. It will have DVI and IEEE connections too.

I don't like the TIVO concept anyway because you pay an extra subscription fee for the service, plus they keep tabs on when and what you watch (not all as anonymous as they let on).
 

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