Buy,com has the HAVA Titanium HD for $119.99. The HAVA Titanium HD from Monsoon Multimedia is a place-shifting device similar to the Sling Media Slingbox SOLO. Clients are available for Windows XP/Vista, Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, and Nokia Internet Tablets – no Mac OS, Palm OS, or Symbian UIQ support.
I work for Sling Media, and the HAVA is ostensibly our primary competitor.
Early DirecTV receivers had serial ports which allowed TiVo, ReplayTV, and other DVRs to control them without using IR blasters. Serial provides a more reliable control connection as there is no chance of interference or having the IR emitters moved while cleaning, etc. And it offers a bidirectional communication channel so the DVR can confirm the change. But later model DirecTV receivers dropped the serial port, forcing users of third party DVRs to use IR blasters.
I just became aware of another solution. Paterson Technologies offers a serial to USB adapter which allows users of TiVo, ReplayTV, ShowStopper, BeyondTV, SageTV, MythTV, and Windows Media Center to control the DirecTV model D11, D12, H20, H21, H32, HR20, and HR21 receivers. It is more than just a simple serial to USB cable, there is some intelligence built in such as the ability to map channels so you can have your DVR, say, tuning channel ’4′ and the satellite receiver actually being tuned to channel 4-1 for OTA ATSC. You can configure it by connecting the adapter to a PC.
It isn’t a cheap option at $42, but for those using 3rd party DVRs with newer DirecTV receivers it may be worth it for the reliability of serial over IR, and the channel mapping abilities. You can check it out for yourself.
According to this post at The Green Button by Charlie Nilsson, Program Manager for Microsoft eHome Division, Microsoft is working on support for the Tuning Adapter in Windows Media Center to allow MCPC users to handle Switched Digital Video. The Tuning Adapters were approved by CableLabs in July and TiVo has already deployed support. Since the TAs are USB devices, it might seem like PCs would be amongst the first platforms to support them. However, it sounds like it may be a while yet:
Microsoft recognizes the impact of this technology on our customers and partners. We are working to enable support for the CableLabs SDV Tuning Adaptor for Windows Media Center Digital Cable Tuners, ensuring that Windows Media Center users will be able to access switched content.
While we have no further details at this time, we will keep you updated as more information becomes available.
While it is good news that MCPC users will be getting SDV support, I’m sure the users with cable systems using SDV would like to see it sooner rather than later.
It has been just over nine months since the last Galleon update, so it is nice to see that development of this TiVo HME application is still continuing. Galleon is one of the leading applications available for TiVo HME, as well as being one of the oldest – evolving from JavaHMO. The 2.5.3 update includes several changes:
The open source Galleon 2.5.3 media server for TiVo is now available.
This version includes the following:
Version 2.5.3:
———————-
* Update JmDNS package to 1.0 (not using JmDNS from
hme-host-sample-1.4.jar anymore); seems to help on Mac OS X 10.5
* Added TiVo name to detail screen in ToGo app
* Updated weather forecast parsing to handle more cases
* Fixed local radar after change on weather source web pages
* Update help URLs to point at content now on sourceforge.net
* Fixed iPhoto album parser to clean out old albums during library
update.Known problems:
* not all galleon skins in HD cover the screen–use tivo skins
* still some layout glitches in HD
* still some HD menu highlights are too big for text
You can download Galleon 2.5.3 here.
Picked up via TiVo Blog
Picked up from TiVo Blog.
