HDTV Forum

I saw in the paper recently that Comcast was going to start offering Tivo boxes as well as the Motorola DVR/STB they currently offer. In the past I tried the Motorola DVR/STB but got rid of it and went with the Cablecard option because I got better picture quality using my TV tuner rather than the cable box tuner. My question is, not being very familiar with Tivo, does the Tivo DVR act as the tuner or can you still utilize the TV tuner as well as use the Tivo box? I really miss the time shift capability of the DVR but I refuse to sacrifice on picture quality.

The Tivo will function exactly like the other Motorola DVR. It, by definition, has the tuner and mpeg decoder built in.

You can always keep the cable card and split the incoming coax to both the Tivo and the cablecard although you may have to pay for both. Then you can use the cablecard for live shows if you prefer the picture and only use the Tivo for shows that you can't watch live.

It's also possible the Tivo will have a better picture than the motorola. Make sure you at least tweak the user controls on the Tivo input using DVE or Avia - if those aren't set properly the picture won't look good.

A quibble about all DVRs being "exactly" the same.

Most people don't get to do a side by side comparison of an actual TIVO brand software vs. the clones. TIVO holds several important patents on how record, pause and watch all at the same time. There are also a number of extra features in the TIVO software, such as "season pass" that can automatically switch recording days if the network changes the schedule. An example is "Survivor" moving to Wednesday during the basketball playoffs, and Tivo automatically still recording it.. Extensive search functions for programs. too.

I have a Toshiba DVD burner that has a DVR recorder too and can be set to record TV shows to the Hard Disk. The Toshiba software is VERY crude compared with Tivo with all sorts of limitations. I don't know about Motorola, but if they have not licensed Tivo's patents, they are a "work around" clone.

The Motorola HD DVR and the SA8000 both have PiP and will record two channels while watching a 3rd. (TiVo is not currently offering this PiP feature) The Pip window is crude, can't be resized, and you have to swap the main and PiP tuners to swap the audio. But, once you press record on one channel, you just change channels and it automatically switches to the 2nd tuner and puts the 1st program in the background. Pressing PiP brings it back up. Many older HDTV's do not allow PiP on the HD inputs, and these cable boxes will add this nifty feature. The HD TiVo cannot do this.
The TiVo has all the wonderful season passes, etc, but these shortcomings are not essential, and can be compensated for. I'd like to see Samsung add a native resolution to the HD DVR (10-250) setup, and allow simultaneous HD and SD output (to a DVD recorder, etc).

mkinn wrote:The Motorola HD DVR and the SA8000 both have PiP and will record two channels while watching a 3rd.

So you can record 2 different channels and watch a 3rd, totally different channel at the same time? Does the 3rd channel have to be analog or can it be any digital channel? That would mean it has 3 HD tuners which is quite nifty if it's true.

mkinn wrote: I'd like to see Samsung add a native resolution to the HD DVR (10-250) setup, and allow simultaneous HD and SD output (to a DVD recorder, etc).

That would be darn near impossible since Samsung doesn't make the HR10-250 (I think it's Hughes).

akirby wrote:

mkinn wrote:The Motorola HD DVR and the SA8000 both have PiP and will record two channels while watching a 3rd.

So you can record 2 different channels and watch a 3rd, totally different channel at the same time? Does the 3rd channel have to be analog or can it be any digital channel? That would mean it has 3 HD tuners which is quite nifty if it's true..

I've heard the Comcast ad for this and it seems to me that they mean you can watch an already recorded program while you are recording two other programs. That would be nothing new. I can't for the life of me see a cable company (and Scientific Atlanta for that matter) putting out a machine with three HD tuners to give to the public at $9.75 per month like they advertise. DVR's are new to their customers and most probably will have their hands full recording one program, let alone two while watching another live one. These are the people that never figured out what that blinking "12:00" was on their VCR's.

That makes much more sense and is what I was expecting.