HDTV Almanac - On the Skids, or Just Skidding on the Turn?

alfredpoor · Post by **alfredpoor** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 6:00 am

Multichannel News ran an intriguing story on Monday about TiVo. Apparently, the television digital video recording (DVR) service has suffered a loss of subscribers from 3.5 million a year ago to 2.7 million now. In an industry where you have to grow to move forward, these look like pretty crushing numbers. According to the article, [...]

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2009/12/hdtv_almanac_on_the_skids_or_just_skidding_on_the_turn.php]Read Column[/url]

akirby · Post by **akirby** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:20 am

Don't forget Tivo signed a new deal with DirecTV and we should start seeing DirecTV receivers with Tivo software within the next few months. I suspect a lot of the lost subscribers are DirecTV customers who were forced to abandon their mostly SD with some HD DirecTV Tivo units for MPEG4 DirecTV HD DVRs.

I would certainly pay a few extra bucks per month for the Tivo software. It's so much better than DirecTV's software although it has improved a lot and is at least acceptable now.

ccclvib · Post by **ccclvib** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 2:44 am

On the other hand... Dish Network's DVR's, which are Tivo-based, even though it took a court case for Dish to admit it, can also receive OTA digital input and include it in the Tivo grid - if the information is available. I have one low power station near here that only shows as "digital programming" on the grid, which makes it difficult to set up recording. Not impossible, but difficult. If Dish decides to leave out the OTA in future upgrades of its receivers, I'll definitely stick to what I have. One full-featured PBS subchannel is not carried by Dish, and the only way I can receive it is off my external antenna. I'll not want to give that up. As it stands, all channels I access are available to be recorded or watched live, both OTA and satellite. The best of both worlds.

akirby · Post by **akirby** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:12 am

But they must not use the Tivo user interface, correct? Or it would have been really obvious and not needed a court case to prove it. DirecTV discontinued the built-in OTA tuners in their latest HD DVRs but I think it's available as a USB accessory. I also noticed that DirecTV has replaced several SD channels with their HD versions after the digital conversion, most notably Atlanta Public TV which was the only one I was still using OTA for.

ccclvib · Post by **ccclvib** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:12 pm

Since I've never used, or seen, the TIVO interface, I can only tell you, what I see looks like what it's always looked like from the days before there was a DVR attached. So, I don't know. And as I said, if they don't continue with the OTA receiver in the newer DVR's I'll just stick with what I've got. We're still talking about multiple channels here. Some of which I really want to watch.