Series 3 TiVo
Posted January 6th, 2006 @ 01:26pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I've considered moving away from TiVo for a long time now largely because, supposedly, DirecTV isn't going to work terribly closely with them after this year (2K6) and because HD support is expensive and/or lacking with the TiVo/DirecTV combo. The alternatives, however, leave a lot to be desired. Most, for example, can't record two channels while letting me play back something previously recorded. Some can't even record two separate channels at the same time!
Now the TiVo folks have announced that they've got a series 3 TiVo in the works for release later this year, and it looks great. I just wonder if it will support DirecTV as my series 2 TiVo does. In fact, it could do it one better just by letting me network the damn thing.
I guess DirecTV could be supported if DirecTV access cards functioned like a CableCard. Right? Really, what I am most likely to do is to get a Series 3 TiVo with Adelphia cable. I signed up for DirecTV when I lived in Florida so that I could get NFL Sunday Ticket. Now that I live in Erie, I see most of the Steelers games (though, because we're closer to Buffalo, I guess Erie stations are sometimes required to broadcast Bills games instead!!!).
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Posted 06 Jan 2006 at 2:59pm #
More information available here, too.
Posted 06 Jan 2006 at 4:40pm #
I'd be surprised if it had DirecTV support; CableCard is an open standard that cable companies are required by law to support, so that people aren't tied to proprietary cable boxes. DirecTV is not required to support it, and IIRC the MPEG-4 compression that DirecTV is using for their new HD stations is not provided for in the Cablecard spec. Plus, DirecTV is pushing their own PVR solutions, so I doubt they'd get back together with TiVo.
FWIW, my Comcast Motorola-brand HD-DVR has dual tuners, so I can record two programs at once. Not sure if I can record two and watch a third, though I think I can. The interface isn't nearly as nice or as smooth as TiVo, but it does record HD.
Posted 06 Jan 2006 at 5:07pm #
Of course, a third choice is something from Apple that might show up next week; It will probably handle HD but I doubt it will have dual tuners.
Naw, Cablecard isn't anything like DirectTV access cards, although theoretically the signal is a bit more similar than it used to be. Last time I looked at DirectTV you really didn't have multiple channels in the cable from the dish; that is the dishes only plucked a channel or two of bandwidth at a time from what the birds were sending... the CableCos have fatter pipe in that regard.