It looks like they’re getting aggressive about pushing the launch now. A May release cuts HD-DVD’s market lead to about two months, as the first HD-DVD releases come at the end of March. HD-DVD still has a price advantage, with Toshiba pricing one player aggressively at $500, and the first BD player being about $1000, but prices should level out in time from competition.
Spotted on ZatzNotFunny, Dave Zatz found a 5 minute video interview by Reuters, with TiVo CEO Tom Rogers. Worth checking out. I wonder what the feature announcements he mentions will be.
PRNewswire…
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PRNewswire…
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TiVo experimented, successfully, with ‘no up front fee’ pricing last fall, and in the Q4 con-call they said they’d be looking to do more pricing plans like that, so it isn’t a surprise. I’ve long said that they should have a cell phone style pricing structure. You can pay all up front or pay something for the box and a monthly rate. But if you’re willing to commit to terms of service - 1 year, 2 years - and/or a higher monthly fee, the up front cost is reduced or eliminated. So I’ll be happy to see them introduce this officially.
As for getting a free box - you can do that today with a refurb. Pre-pay for a year and get a ‘factory-renewed’ 40 hour box free. (Tip: When you activate a box, if you have a prepaid subscription for any period (3/6/12 months), you can activate as lifetime and apply the credit towards the cost of lifetime instead.)
In a thread at TiVoCommunity.com I spotted a little Windows program that you can configure to connect to your TiVo and estimate the remaining available space. You can download it here. Not quite a FSI on the TiVo itself, but some folks find it useful.
Recently there were some posts about TiVo truncating recordings - stopping too early. Speculation at the time was that it might be related to the Overlap Protection, aka Clipping, added in recent software. Over on TiVoCommunity.com TiVoPony clarified the issue and provided some details. It is not related to clipping, it is a separate bug that has been found and fixed. It will be part of the coming 7.2.2 update. In the meantime, a reboot fixes the problem - it only happens in units that have been running without a reboot for some time. So if you experience any truncation, or just want to be proactive to prevent it, reboot the box. That should tide it over until 7.2.2 is out.