Comcast DVR Comcastrophe

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FiOS Fiber & ComcastThings are actually looking promising for my FiOS install scheduled for tomorrow; a tech is out in the yard at the moment running the fiber from the hub in the alley to the service entrance of the house. I have to admit that I got a kick out of Comcast in this whole deal -- since my Comcast (internet, no TV service) coax is buried in the same path, they were required to come out last week and mark where their cable is buried so that Verizon doesn't cut it when they bury the fiber. Just before they did this, a Comcast salesman came to the door "just to let me know they'd be working in the yard" -- this...


Tivo and Comcast - together at last?Speaking of signs of the impending apocolypse, apparently Comcast and Tivo have actually kissed and made up, and cut a deal to offer Tivo to Comcast cable customers. Of course, it's anyone's guess as to whether they'll actually market it in such a manner as to be enough to save Tivo from shuffling off into that long dark night... "Comcast will continue to market its own DVR. Most new customers now get a dual-tuner DVR, which lets viewers record two shows at once as well as high-definition television; TiVo offers such features only to DirectTV satellite customers." Maybe Tivo ought to just be licensing the interface (which is still better than anything else out there) and get over everything else....


Tivo and Comcast - together at last?Speaking of signs of the impending apocolypse, apparently Comcast and Tivo have actually kissed and made up, and cut a deal to offer Tivo to Comcast cable customers. Of course, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether they’ll actually market it in such a manner as to be enough to save Tivo from shuffling off into that long dark night… "Comcast will continue to market its own DVR. Most new customers now get a dual-tuner DVR, which lets viewers record two shows at once as well as high-definition television; TiVo offers such features only to DirectTV satellite customers." Maybe Tivo ought to just be licensing the interface (which is still better than anything else out there) and get over everything else. ...


Better Media Guides NeededThomas Hawk thinks that media guides need an overhaul. Although his examples are specific to MCE, Thomas is quick to point out that pretty much all PVR guides suck, and he's right. They all have content provided by one or two guide sources, and that content comes from the broadcasters themselves (and is usually pretty lame). But there's better metadata right in the content stream... What is needed first off is to begin indexing closed captioned text for all television that is repeated. Much of television is actually repeated. News shows will play the same shows over and over, programming will show on East and West Coast feeds, syndicated content has already been captioned, standard network repeat stuff, etc. By...


CableCARD and DRMWhile I'm thrilled to see Microsoft's announcement of CableCARD support coming to Windows Media Center next year, I still get a little nervous as to how all of the digital rights managment issues are going to work out. 'Cuz things aren't exactly rosy on the CableCARD front, even without involving DVRs. For example, check out this thread over on the AVSForum's Plasma and LCD forum: Panasonic Policy prohibiting digital audio out with Cable Card? The upshot of it is that owners of Panasonic plasma TVs with CableCARD support are finding that their digital audio output is disabled whenever the cable company sets a flag indicating that a channel contains "high value" content -- basically, any time you're viewing anything other...