Comments on: TiVo shows Series3 HDTV Cable Card unit at CES

By: brooklyn movers NY

brooklyn movers NY — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:23:00 +0000

I really loved what was written on your blog………….looking for
more of it.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:53:59 +0000

Sorry about bumping such an old thread.

Stuck in hotel with a TV that only has the coax connection no cable box. I brought my DVD recorder (Poloroid DMR-2001G) I thought maybe if I had the cable come into the DRM-2001G, and out to TV that I might get something. I tried watching a dvd, but only static on TV. I read through some of the threads and now realize the tuner is anologue only, and therefore now obsolete???

I really just thought that might help to hook up to S3. The S3 is really the only thing I am concerned about. I don’t need to record anything. I only want anyway to get audio/video out so I can watch my recorded shows.

Any ideas? The hotel cable sucks and I am stuck for another week.

Thanks

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:48:23 +0000

Cole – They are NOT going to be encoding with and encoding that doesn’t use CableCARD. That’s not not what SDV is, it doesn’t even have anything to do with the way the video is encoded. It is a transmission and tuning level issue. Like I said, see the more recent posts – but if nothing else, read this one.

By: cole

cole — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:39:12 +0000

but there is no hd inputs on the hdtivo and if my cable company is going to be encoding the hd signals with encoding that doesn’t use a cablecard…. by switching to SDV cable mediacom is basically making the cablecard useless, correct???

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:47:01 +0000

Cole, You mean SDV – Switched Digital Video? Note that it does not ‘get rid of’ the CableCARDs, SDV still uses them. There is a solution coming – see the more recent posts.

By: Cole

Cole — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:40:05 +0000

So my local cable company (mediacom…. i’m located in iowa) is going to be switching to SD cable sometime in the near future. I have the HD tivo and an hdtv (the reason for getting the hd tivo). Does anyone know what is going to happen with the technology when this happens? what things are coming out that will enable me to view hd channels since mediacom is getting rid of the cablecards? am i going to need to take back the tivo and subscribe to the cable company’s DVR?

By: TiVo

TiVo — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:23:27 +0000

Thats true about the design, I like the postmodern look on it…

By: megazone

megazone — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:11:48 +0000

Multi-room viewing, which allows you to move shows between TiVos, is supposedly being enabled later this year.

As for AppleTV – I’m just not interested in it. It is an over-priced media center extender and I don’t really have any use for it. I can use my TiVo to play music or view photos through my stereo system. I never buy video from ITMS because it is overpriced for what you get – I rent from Unbox on TiVo if I want video downloads. And I don’t really watch much web video.

There just isn’t any appeal in AppleTV for me.

By: Bonny Dennis

Bonny Dennis — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:00:40 +0000

Do you know of any way you can transfer shows from the HD3 to a HD2 unit (Not HD show of course!). It is irritatin whan you tape an extra show on another TIVO and you have to watch it in bed. Hae you tried Apple TV yet? I just got it and so far it is totally cool!

By: megazone

megazone — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:04:07 +0000

OK, thanks.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:00:40 +0000

Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.

Raymon W.

By: megazone

megazone — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:16:53 +0000

You should see http://www.gizmolovers.com/Series3-Review.html and http://www.gizmolovers.com/Series3-FAQ.html

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:51:23 +0000

Will this unit be able to record virtually any show/channel ? AND WHAT I MEAN BY THIS…i currently have a sony DVR which being able to record shows on the HD and watch tv also is a mjaor plus…but it will not record all channels…even though tv guide etc and the tv show the shows,,,it sometimes records another channel (dont know why)or the channel line up on the tv guide side doesnt even show that channel. If its manually imputed…it still does not record it correctly…for instance…time warner 149 the outdoor channel. My regular tv shows it..but not the guide…i have these channels as i pay for them….but cannot record them…some people have told me they r copy rite protected…dont by it at all. From my experience…if its protected from being recorded..it will be fuzzy unable to view..but it will record the channel example hbo…is anyone using the dmr sony eh55 ?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:33:52 +0000

I am so with you. I *HATE* the Comcast POS DVR. It has more personality quirks than an angry and tired two year old. Looks like the series three is the answer to my prayers. I’ve been hearing rumours of Comcast testing Tivo on their dual tuner DVRs, but I don’t trust Comcast. Where is my series three DVR???

By: megazone

megazone — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 21:53:46 +0000

CableCARD v1 supports a single tuner, so you’d need two cards to use both tuners. CableCARD w/ Multistream would support both tuners with one card, but that isn’t really deployed yet and may not be by the time the box is out.

And it would probably support all of the channels EXCEPT CCv1 does not support bidirectional communication – so no PPV, OnDemand, etc, from the TiVo. If there is a way to order those services out-of-band (online, phone, etc) then they could probably be tuned by the TiVo.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:20:16 +0000

what would the second cable card do for me? And the t3 would support all channel that cox provides?

By: megazone

megazone — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:07:32 +0000

If you have an HD package from Cox and get a CableCARD (or two) from them, yes.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:58:57 +0000

Ok so let me get this straight. No satallite will work. But if i order digital tv from Cox communication i i will get digital TV that is HD?
Am i correct?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 02:04:02 +0000

The point everyone is missing is this is a stand alone dual tuner option for anyone on cable. I love Tivo and have the Comcast DVR I came from DirecTV but after I moved I can’t get satellite anymore due to trees and a hill. I would love to have a Tivo again but I can’t live with a single tuner as I have about 45 programs I record and many of them overlap and are not reran. This is the answer for people like me who hate the Cable providers DVR so much that they have threatened to smash, burn, and throw it out a window in communications sent to their cable provider. Yes I did say these things in a email. They ignored my comments and told me that it would be as much as a year before a upgraded model will come out will screw them and there $20 up charge for having the use of there piece of junk. I’m getting a Series 3 and it will be by a great deal of control and comments from the wife to keep me from throwing the piece of junk they call a DVR through the window of the local cable office.

By: megazone

megazone — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 10:03:36 +0000

This has been discussed several times in comments on S3 posts. The short, short version is real-time encoding of an analog HD stream takes powerful, expensive hardware.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 09:53:28 +0000

Am I missing something? Why is it technically impossible to encode an external HD stream, just as the current standalone Tivos do it now with an SD stream? Is the hardware just not up to snuff to handle that or are we talking digital copyright flag?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:46:28 +0000

The series 3 will replace your cable box, you will get a cable card from your provider and insert it into the series 3 unit.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:58:56 +0000

BTW, thanks for the reply. I was pretty confused as to why I couldn’t do what I was questioning. You helped me realize what direction I’ll have to go when I make a change eventually.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 15:31:10 +0000

I see…I think. lol So I guess I lose. Over-priced and terrible service cable is not an acceptable option for me and DTV’s version of HD TiVo isn’t as feature rich. So my options are drop the features and get my HD content, or keep the features and waste my HD hardware. I think TiVo is going to lose me on this one.

By: megazone

megazone — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:53:44 +0000

This was discussed in other comments. There are consumer component capture cards, but most, if not all, are SD, not HD. Compressing an analog HD signal in real time takes a lot of power, making it fairly expensive to do at this time. Adding that capability to the Series3 would greatly increase the cost, plus there would still be a quality loss as any realtime encoding can never match the professional multipass encoding at the head end. So real videophiles would prefer a DVR that captures the raw digital data. For the added cost and complexity – not just a much more powerful encoder, but the physical ports, etc, the market isn’t worth it. Note that the S3 has a simplified input – it accepts a cable and antenna input – and that’s it. No A/V in at all. It keeps it simplified and reduces the costs.