PVR Wire

1. This is great, but where is the Mac support???

Posted at 11:19AM on Nov 14th 2006 by Roy Levitt

2. How depressing. What a bunch of boring announcements from TiVo.

Autotranscode? As a PSP and TiVo owner, I was interested in transcoding using Desktop, but not enough to pay for it. And the new features in 2.4 are silly. I'm supposed to pay to watch free web video on my TV?!

Home Movies? I'm supposed to pay another fee for this? Puh-leeze. On top of that, the average TiVo user has little use for this. It will require dumping the video to your PC, encoding it properly, and then uploading it to a third party website. Too difficult.

Celebrity guides? I have yet to get any use out of these, and I doubt the new enhancements will make it any more useful. I'm actually able to figure out what I want to watch without the help of celebrities.

Unified search? This actually sounds somewhat useful, but it's akin to finding a quarter on the sidewalk. Oh cool. I can use that, I guess, but it's not a big deal.

CBS content? If I could download the latest Amazing Race to my TiVo, that would be...well..amazing. Otherwise, I refer you back to my quarter-on-the-street analogy.

TiVo really needed some sort of breaktrough announcement to spur some holiday sales. I guess this is all they've got.

Posted at 11:31AM on Nov 14th 2006 by Radioscott

3. Hmm, the announcement I was hoping to see was that they stopped throwing things in and fixed the features they have. Like a guide that takes less than two and a half seconds to move from one channel to another (not change a channel, but to just look at the information.) Or freeze for up to a couple of minutes while queuing up all of the buttons pressed and then playing them out in slow motion for the following ten minutes.

THOSE are the features I want to see - otherwise they're just chroming up some broken machinery.

Posted at 2:12PM on Nov 14th 2006 by Phil Wheat

4. Transcode??? I'd rather they update the Tivo boxes so that they can MPEG4 natively.

Posted at 3:14PM on Nov 14th 2006 by Joe

5. I think TiVo has jumped the shark. First, they release a lame two tuner TiVo that doesn't do anyone any good since you can't control two cable boxes with it and so many cable systems require settop boxes to decode. Second, they release a really cool, but prohibitively expensive CableCard box. $800? Not any time soon for me. Then they require a three year commitment without themselves committing that their damned hardware will even last that long. Add to this the lame WiFi adapter that was introduced without any security, the lack of proper iTunes support (AAC), crappy, buggy, chrash-prone TiVo-to-Go software for Windows, pointless and incomplete software for the Mac, and mediocre and unimaginative feature sets for the client software upgrades and you have a prime opportunity for a competitor to come in with a break-though product and knock TiVo out of the market.

Posted at 4:54PM on Nov 14th 2006 by Brian C. Bock

6. "I think TiVo has jumped the shark. First, they release a lame two tuner TiVo that doesn't do anyone any good since you can't control two cable boxes with it and so many cable systems require settop boxes to decode."

Um.... with the Series 3 - you don't need a cable box at all... you get two cable cards from your cable provider. You obviously have an ax to grind because most of the comments you made are completely inaccurate.

Posted at 8:32PM on Nov 14th 2006 by snarkolepsy

7. Joe,

The Series3 has a decoder that can handle MPEG-2, MPEG-4/H.264, and VC-1/WMV9. They can enable the newer codecs in software in an update.

But the Series2 hardware cannot support the new codecs, ever. The decoder just doesn't handle them.


Brian,

It is clear you don't really know what you're talking about. The S2DT can tune two analog channels at one time, or one analog and one digital channel. The largest segment of TiVo users use *analog* cable, so the S2DT is fantastic for them. Since none of the cable company DVRs are available without subscribing to digital cable, the S2DT is their only dual-tuner DVR option and it saves the expense of a digital plan.

And for 'digital cable' customers, nearly all digital cable systems are really hybrid systems with analog cable up to channel 100 and digital for 100 and above. Most of the conflicts people have are with network shows, which are nearly always in the analog range. Most of the digital range are cable channels, which often repeat the same shows a few times a day. The only trouble you'd have with an S2DT is if two *digital* channels conflict and neither show has a later airing that does not conflict.

I have an S3 in my living room and an S2DT in my bed room, setup with the same Season Passes and Wish Lists. The S2DT almost always records exactly the same thing as the S3, conflicts are just not an issue. I also still have a plain S2 with most of the same programming (it was my main unit until the S3), and that unit will miss some shows because of the single tuner creating more conflicts. The S2DT is a clear improvement and quite useful to anyone with analog or hybrid-digital cable. Or anyone who uses both analog cable and satellite, as some do to get locals via cable.

The S3 is certainly expensive, but it has been available for as low as $650 already. You just need to watch the sales and specials. The price will come down with time, if you don't like the price - wait.

As for the service commitment - you can commit to 1-, 2-, or 3-year terms. No one is forcing anyone to commit to 3-years. You can also pre-pay instead of paying monthly and save more money.

Also, units under commitment do have extended coverage. I quote: "The parts portion only of your Limited Warranty for your TiVo DVR will be extended for the term of your commitment period." And you can swap the unit for a new one under the same commitment, so you aren't committed to using that box.

As for the WiFi adapter - just how is it 'lame'? It outperforms all other 11g adapters by up to 60% in user tests. It also has always supported WEP, just like the other adapters, so it has had security. I know WEP is lame, but it is still there. And now the next update is adding WPA/WPA2 for the TiVo adapter, which will put it further ahead of the other adapters. (The TiVo adapter has a processor to handle network processing, which is why it performs better and will handle WPA/WPA2.)

As for iTunes support - blame Apple. Apple will not license FairPlay to 3rd parties like TiVo. Apple wants to force you to listen to ITMS music only via iTunes, and iPod, etc. TiVo has said they'd like to support ITMS music, but Apple isn't interested. You can play non-DRM'd AAC files via TiVo Desktop. TiVo has a plug-in API for Desktop and one of the plug-ins adds support for AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, WAV - pretty much any format that Windows Media filters support. And you can do the same thing on a Mac with Mac TiVo Desktop and LAME.

As for your comments on TiVo Desktop - whatever you say, it has been OK for me. It isn't great, but it is usable and functions as advertised.

Posted at 10:10PM on Nov 14th 2006 by MegaZone

8. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this. I have a Tivo Series 2. If I get a video ipod, can I transfer my TivoToGo shows onto it? Thanks

Posted at 1:10PM on Nov 23rd 2006 by David