Yeah, multi-room viewing was cut out. That’s a real bummer.
Once vista comes out the series3 will have some real competition. If you’re on the fence, wait 3 months and see what’s what. I wouldn’t expect MCE vista machines to cost less than tivo series 3’s, but they should have more functionality. They’re real computers after all.
The dishnetwork lawsuit was entirely different. Tivo told dish about their IP under a closed agreement, as they tried to get them to license it for their recievers. Dish then willfully infringed on tivo, directly stealing their technology. At least that’s what tivo alleges, and a judge agreed with them.
Obviously I wasn’t saying that someone should take totally clone tivo, replace the little smiling TV dude with a smiling anthromorphic cup of tea and call it “TeaVo”. I assure you there’s more then one way to build an intuitive interface and combine it with useful features. Just that for whatever reason, nobody else has ever done that.
Isn’t MythTV pretty good? I mean, it runs on Linux just like TiVo does (albiet the latter runs on PPC hardware). Someone could make a commercial hardware box for it, just like how iPaqs run Linux, or whatnot.
Myth is groovy, but you can’t use cablecard with it so you’re stuck with off-air HDTV only. Theoretically you could record video from the firewire-out on your cablebox since they are legally mandated to include them, but in practice they don’t work very well. Or at all. Or they work just intermittently enough to be incredibly aggravating.
Myth is groovy, but you can’t use cablecard with it so you’re stuck with off-air HDTV only. Theoretically you could record video from the firewire-out on your cablebox since they are legally mandated to include them, but in practice they don’t work very well. Or at all. Or they work just intermittently enough to be incredibly aggravating.
Really the only choices for HD are:
your cable company’s or satellite provider’s shitty DVR
tivo series3
windows vista MCE (and you will have to buy a pre-built machine from dell or gateway, you can’t build it yourself)
Yeah, CableCard certification rules out homebuilt MCE machines, so it certainly rules out MythTV. The DRM seems less about preventing piracy than making it difficult to break into the DVR market.
Because cable and satellite providers are notoriously reticient about licensing TiVo’s software. DirecTV dropped tivo because they were taking $1 out of the $5/month DVR charge to their customers.[/quote]I think you missed my earlier comment. Both Comcast and Cox have already announced they’re working on bringing Tivo’s software to their Motorola DVRs. That’s a big percentage of the cable market.
The justification I’m seeing here for the Series 3 is that the Tivo UI and basic software is worth the money. That justification is dead if Tivo is licensing their software to everyone. Even assuming the cable boxes don’t support “advanced” features such as TivoToGo and Multiroom viewing… well, neither does the Series3 (right now)!
I went from DirectTivo to Comcast HD DVR and it’s been OK. Certainly I miss a lot of the elegant UI that Tivo had but Comcast’s has been working fine for the most part and it’s certainly nice that I didn’t have to purchase anything. The Hard Drive is insainly small though. I don’t even know if I get 15 hours of HD on here.
The comcast firmware is so bad I am almost tempted to get a Series 3, now I understand the vagaries of cablecards. But I think I’ll just hold out for the comcast Tivo boxes. I wonder how long we’ll be waiting for those?
Wait…what? This was one of the big draws of the Series 3 outside of the interface. That cheer you just heard was from the third-party TiVo modders/retailers. Dinner is served.
Is Motorola working this out or Comcast and Cox? I have a Motorola box from RCN that desperately needs an overhaul.
If the port is disabled, it doesn’t matter what the community wants to do. That said Weaknees has already upgraded their Series3 through the usual means. That suggests the E-SATA won’t be an issue, whatever Tivo’s plans for it.
Is Motorola working this out or Comcast and Cox? I have a Motorola box from RCN that desperately needs an overhaul. ComCast and Cox both announced it as independent things, but both mentioned the Motorola box specifically. I’d be surprised if Mot wasn’t involved somehow.
Isn’t that what DRM is usually used for, though? Anti-competitive practices? I haven’t seen any case where the barrier is too high for a customer to get the product in a different, non-DRM, form and use it however they wish. Why would I pay $9.99 - $14.99 for a movie that is DRM’ed with FairPlay 2 when it means I can’t burn a physical copy of it that plays in any DVD player? Why not just buy a real DVD and rip it into iPod playable format?
ATI is working on a CableCard tuner card as part of the MS/Media Center Vista rollout. Once that’s out you should be able to get homebrew PVRs like Beyond TV up and running using HD. (Beyond TV supports HD now, but only over-the-air.)
Once the consumer version is out that’ll be the way to go with PVR. I have a Time Warner HD DVR and don’t use it. I don’t wanna give up one-key commercial skip, viewing shows over a LAN, and a hard drive I can actually access.
The party line is that there won’t be a consumer version, ever. It won’t be sold as OEM either. You can only get one from an authorized reseller as part of an entire computer system certified by cablelabs. If you manage to get your hands on one and install it in your homebuilt box, the cable company installer will check your computer against a list of certified boxes and refuse to give you a cablecard.
In reality, of course, these things are all built by the chinese so there’s a damn good chance you’ll be able to get one, and I just picked up two cablecards from the time warner cable offices on 23rd street fifteen minutes ago without an installer coming over for my new series3.
Yeah you read that right, it was delivered today, and my new series3 is going through guided setup right now. It’s so shiny!
I have three Tivos – two DirecTV HD units and my old Philips 14-hour upgraded with big hard drives and Ethernet. But I can’t see ever buying another one with the direction they’re going.
Well long story short-- it’s a tivo that works with HD. Not really surprising, but like all tivos it works absolutely flawlessly and exactly as you would hope in every respect.
I upgraded from an ancient series1, so I don’t miss tivotogo and all that stuff; I never had it in the first place. Hell, I’m impressed by the folders in the now playing list, that’s a nice innovation. It’s actually susprising how little the interface and featureset have evolved since my series1 running version3 software was last updated in, like, 2000. I skipped a whole generation and it’s the same thing, just faster and in HD… and yet, nobody else has matched it. Weird.
It’s an issue if I want more hard drive space and don’t want to void my warranty. Oh well…guess it’s another third-party box for me. Once the price drops.
