DirecTivo Software Update (Too Little, Too Late)

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Dishplayer 942 Near MissI was all set for some prime HDTV PVR action last night -- I was serious when I said that the latest DirecTivo software update was the last straw, and I went ahead and signed up for Dish. It's really a no-brainer, at least once I decided that the DirecTivo was an orphan stepchild and was never likely to get the full current Tivo suite of functionality. I also wanted HDTV PVR support (for more than my locals), so that left me with Cable (not gonna happen), The HDTivo (too much $$ for too many bugs) and Dishnetwork's Dishplayer 942 (still too many bugs, possibly, but far less $$ for a new subscriber). Dish's recent acquisition of another 10 HD...


Tivo & LongevityLuke Hutteman is concerned about Tivo staying around. I was an early Tivo adopter, now own a second one (a DirecTivo), and am anxiously awaiting the HD version this year to buy a third… Although it’s of course quite subjective, I feel safe to say that the value I’ve gotten out of it (in convenience and pleasure) have already far outweighed the entry costs.  For several years, one of the best deals going has been the DirecTivo, which incorporates two DirecTV receivers.  Since it’s partially subsidized by DirecTV (like purchasing any other receiver), and since it forgoes the expense of having an MPEG2 encoder (it just saves the encoded satellite data stream), it is usually sold very cheap—every so often...


HD PVRs - Rock and Hard PlaceThomas Hawk has some comments on my Dish 942 article. Thomas writes: These type of HDTV PVRs will be the competition for TiVo and Media Center going forward. It will be important that TiVo and Media Center are able to distinguish themselves in the HDTV PVR space in order to convince people that it is worth spending the money over what you can get for free (kinda free anyway) from your cable or satellite provider. Absolutely -- and there's the rub. HD sources come in three forms today -- broadcast, cable, and satellite. For broadcast, you can get your local channels, unencrypted. Cable and Satellite come with their own encryption on board, and by and large, there's no way to...


What I miss about TivoI've been Tivo-less for about 7 months now, going from an old 1st generation 14 hour Tivo + a DirecTivo + SageTV, all fed by DirecTV, to a DishPlayer 942 and a Windows MCE system, fed by (no surprise) Dish. The time away has allowed me a little time to reflect on what I miss about the Tivo experience, as well as a few things I don't. Things I miss: Stability -- As much as I like other systems, I've yet to find one that's as stable as a Tivo. I'm sure others have had different experiences, but for me, Tivo always just worked. If I'd have come home and found that I'd missed a recording due to a lockup,...


Tivo BoredomWhile things are heating up in the do-it-yourself space (lumping Windows MCE in here, even though many of them are bought pre-built these days), things are sure looking boring a bleak in the off-the-shelf DVR market these days. Tivo is dinking around with pricing deals and minor features like on-line scheduling (for some users), but they haven't done anything really innovative in quite a while. There is no HD support for Tivo other than for the orphaned HD DirecTivo, which probably has it's days numbered as DirecTV moves towards MPEG4. Now that OTA HD recording is becoming a cheap and established technology, they could bring out a box that included that along with SD recording, to put them on par...