The New TiVo HD DVR - $299.99

[Shane]

TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), announced today the launch of a new TiVo high definition DVR, delivering a premium HD experience at an affordable price. Starting today, consumers can pre-order TiVo HD at www.tivo.com for just $299.99, down from the original TiVo Series3™ HD Digital Media Recorder at $799.99. Product expected to arrive on retail shelves in early August. The new TiVo HD DVR is the ultimate HDTV companion, maximizing the HD cable experience by combining a new popular price with the clarity of HD programming and our Emmy® award-winning TiVo™ service. The new TiVo HD is also a Digital Cable Ready set-top-box that works seamlessly with any cable provider in the U.S. Moreover, the new product also enables the latest and greatest exclusive TiVo service features such as Movie & TV Downloads from Amazon.com, Home Movie Sharing and universal Swivel™ search, delivering the best of broadband video directly to the television set.

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/news/2007/0 ... ivo_hd.php]Read the Full Article[/url]

[herbdrake]

This welcome addition to the TiVo line has too many unknowns to risk a pre-order. Our cable situation is a very unusual one, so I would expect that only a few will want answers to these questions.

1. Our system uses a DSR470 cable box, and is not compatible with CableCard. So the first question is this: Will it interface with external cable boxes the way the Series 2 units do? (I assume "no.")

2. In the future, when our system does support the CableCard, it will use the multi-stream "MCard." TiVo's release suggests that this unit MAY require two cards, indicating that they have not solved the MCard problem that has plagued Series 3 users. So the question is: Can this unit use a single MCard for dual-channel?

3. Our system has HDTV local channels in ATSC form. The new TiVo unit has an ATSC tuner. Here is question three: Will the ATSC tuner tune in ATSC channels ON CABLE CHANNEL FREQUENCIES? (The answer is "no" for the DirecTV HD Tivos, and if they are using the same chip set here the answer is probably "no" for this unit as well.)

If anybody can provide authorative answers to these questions, it would help a lot.

PS: Gee, wouldn't it be nice if all manufacturers would provide exhaustive spec sheets for all their products? TV manufacturers fare no better than TiVo in this regard. Their oughtta be a law.

[Richard]

Upon first seeing this I was angered having just spent $799 for the Series 3... feeling slightly better but oh the cost of extra recording time...

This box appears to be the same thing with a different front panel and hard drive. The Series 3 does 32 hours of HD versus 20 on this new one.

Didn't know about the Mcard but from what I just found out all it does is negate the need for two cable cards for a dual tuner system. It still won't do two way for PPV VOD. Hopefully your cable company will support both which would only make sense.

CableCARD Basics
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/20 ... _basic.php

Check the link CableLabs provided for that article.

#3 - I don't think the DirecTV were QAM or if they were they did not do the 256 QAM which is what most of us need for our cable systems. My old Zenith OTA/cable HD receiver had that problem. I don't think the Tivo will have a problem with any version of local HD delivery via cable.

BTW, we are very happy with our Series 3! Now if we could just get the cable company to fix the problems on their end... getting the @#$% cable cards set right

[herbdrake]

The TiVo box I tested (over a year ago) had a built-in DirecTV receiver and also an antenna jack so the user could receive local HDTV channels. That was in the days when DirecTV only supplied local stations in NTSC (we may still be in those days -- I don't know, I don't care). Anyway, that was a good idea but, from my point of view, a poor execution. That unit would only receive ATSC on broadcast channels, not cable channels. Needless to say, there was nothing QAM in that box -- only ATSC for local channels and QPSK for satellite channels.

[akirby]

DirecTV now has ATSC local channels but it requires a new mpeg4 receiver (non-Tivo) and a 5 LNB dish.

Not sure why you would need QAM if you have already have satellite and OTA ATSC.

[jcook01]

Vip622, probably can get it for free as a new subscriber, best HD-PVR on the market.

[akirby]

You're never going to convince a Tivo user that any non-Tivo DVR is better.

You're also not allowed to post that something is bad or good or better or worse without giving reasons.

[akirby]

Forgot to add - in addition to the smaller hard drive and lack of front panel display it also comes with a much cheaper remote.

If they would just add DirecTV support I'd be on it in a heartbeat. A HD Tivo that supports cablecard, ATSC, NTSC, Dish and DirecTV would be the ultimate DVR.