I visited both of Moxi’s locations at CES today and spent a fair bit of time talking to their reps and watching demos. I also got a little hands on time with the products. The Moxi reps were quite informative and helpful, and I appreciate it. First things first - still no pricing or release dates on any of the products. Though I did get a couple of reps to acknowledge that the $1000 MSRP that has been repeatedly associated with the Moxi Multi-Room HD DMR is not an unreasonable figure. Also, there will be no subscription on the Moxi products - it is a one time purchase. So it is somewhat like product lifetime service on a TiVo. By way of comparison, the most recent price point for lifetime is $399, with TiVo selling a TiVo HD with product lifetime for $698. So $1000 might not be unreasonable, depending on the final product specs, such as drive capacity. There are still too many unknowns to call it. One rep said that ‘May’ might not be an unreasonable time frame for the first units.
As an aside, I asked about the Moxi OCAP port that was reported back in May and was told that work had ‘just started’ on that so it was far too early to provide any details.
There are three products in the line-up, the Moxi Multi-Room HD DMR (and associated Moxi Mate client box), the Moxi Home Cinema HD DMR, and the Moxi TV for PC software.
I know I’ve been harsh at times in the past when posting about Moxi, so I thought I’d start with some of the things I like.
First, as it is what you notice first, their UI looks good. It has been engineered for 16:9 HD displays and it really ‘pops’. All the graphics are sharp, the colors are bright, text is crisp - it just looks damn good. And, frankly, as much as I like it, TiVo’s UI is looking a bit dated. TiVo really needs to fully rework their UI for HD. At home I have my Series3 on HDMI1 and my PS3 on HDMI2 - and if I switch between the TiVo UI and Sony’s XMB UI on the PS3, which is all HD, I really notice the difference. So Moxi gets points for the look of their UI. And, while I didn’t think it was as intuitive as TiVo’s UI, I found it fairly easy to navigate.
While they weren’t demonstrating it yet, the concept of being able to stream HD video for multi-room playback to a simple client box is nice. That’s something I’ve wished TiVo would do for several years now. I like TiVo’s ability to copy shows between units, and I don’t think it should go away, but I think it would be nice if streaming were an option as well. Being able to have a simple client box, instead of a full-fledged DVR, in another room would be nice. (Maybe TiVo should hook-up with Sling and find a way to make the SlingCatcher a stream client for a TiVo.) I’m not sold on Digeo’s planned implementation, but the overall concept is nice.
The unit I played with was also fairly responsive to the remote, pretty good performance. Selections came right up.
The units support clear QAM tuning, with guide data, unlike TiVo. With the TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD you can manually tune clear QAM channels without CableCARDs, but need the cards for any guide data and real TiVo functionality (Season Passes, etc). So it is nice that the Moxi units have this.
The way the Moxi UI works is kind of two dimensional. There is a horizontal ‘bar’ that you scroll across, and each item on the bar then has a vertical menu in that category. There also isn’t much ‘drill down’ on the Moxi menus, they toss things left and right on the screen more often. So you may select something from the vertical menu, which is on the left side of the screen, and that opens selections on the right side of the screen. It doesn’t really feel like you’re navigating a hierarchical menu as much as TiVo does. Sometimes it felt easier to get ‘lost’ than on TiVo, but overall it was fairly good. Fortunately, TiVo has been moving in this direction too, collapsing more of their menus and doing more of the side-by-side style of screens. This is seen more in their OCAP software, but it is working its way into the standalone units too. The new Web Video UI on the TiVo uses this kind of flow for example.
Moxi will have online scheduling, like TiVo. Unlike TiVo, they will have instantaneous conflict notification. So if you try to schedule a show on the web and it conflicts with a show already scheduled on your DMR, the website tells you immediately and asks you what you want to do. This is accomplished through communication with the DMR in real time. So there is no delay as there currently is with TiVo, where you have to wait for a confirmation email to see if the request worked or not. Now, this could change with TiVo with their coming implementation of XMPP as part of the web video work. With XMPP the scheduling server could IM the TiVo with the request immediately - and immediately be notified of any conflicts. I am hoping TiVo goes this route, it is a nice feature. I’ve never liked that aspect of online scheduling for TiVo.
I also like the physical design of the Moxi Home Cinema HD DMR. It is basically an AMD Live! PC, but the chassis is very nice. There is a small LCD display on the left front which can display the time, channel, etc, and you can even set the background to any photograph you want to use. I think they did a nice job on the physical design of the box.
Unfortunately, there were more issues I didn’t like, or found unsatisfying. I couldn’t recommend Moxi over TiVo to anyone based on what I saw today, there are too many missing features or rough edges for what is being billed as a premium product.
The Moxi TV for PC software I had the least issues with. It is the full-blown Moxi interface, running on Windows XP - Home, Pro, or Media Center. It does not run on Vista at this time, but I was told that is being worked on. I hope they can tackle that soon, since it does kind of look weak not to support Vista this long after it has shipped. Apparently all three products use the very same code base (C++ I was told) and it is just compiled for the different products. The PC software has some minor differences due to the fact that it is running on a PC. The on-screen information browser for news, etc, is not there - since you’re on a PC and can use a real browser, after all. Frankly, I can only hope that the TiVo for PC software being developed by Nero comes as close to reproducing the TiVo experience on a PC.
The number of tuners cards supported at this time is limited, but I was told that is being worked on to expand support to additional cards. Now, the person who gave me the demo indicated that HD tuners would work - but the spec sheet and web site both say it only supports SD antenna or cable, no HD at all. I did catch her in a couple of mistakes, so I tend to believe the spec sheet in this instance. They really need to enable HD support, at least OTA ATSC, especially if this isn’t going to ship for several months. OTA NTSC is going away, remember. Who is going to want to buy a product that might no longer work a few months later? Or even work now for channels that have switched already, the FCC says it is OK for channels to turn off their analog signals before the deadline.
It does provide you with a single interface to your media - it plays back MP3s, views photos, even plays CDs and DVDs. And the rep told me it’ll play Blu-ray or HD DVD discs - whatever the hardware it is on can play. One nice feature is that it will work with Microsoft’s Media Center remote control, and apparently other PC remotes, so you don’t need to drive it from the keyboard. The demo was run using the MS remote. It is a nice effort, and I see potential, but they really need to get it working on Vista and get HD tuner support in there before they ship the first version commercially.
OK, moving on to the Moxi Home Cinema HD DMR. I still don’t think the Moxi Home Cinema HD DMR makes a lick of sense in today’s market. It is hobbled by lacking any support for CableCARD. It is NTSC/ATSC OTA and analog cable and clear QAM only. NTSC OTA is going away in a year, of course, so that’s not really a factor. Just how many people are looking to record OTA ATSC and analog cable and clear QAM, but no encrypted digital cable channels? On many cable systems, that’s a number of channels, and usually all of the premium channels. I think the lack of CableCARD will be a big deal for a product at this end of the market.
The design is very nice, as I said, but I don’t understand the niche it is trying to fill - and the reps I talked to really couldn’t explain that either. I even had two Digeo reps say to me that they don’t expect it to be a big seller. It is something of a ‘home theater in a box’ with a CD/DVD drive, DVR functionality, and built-in receiver functions with direct speaker connections for 5.1 audio. But it has some failings even in this regard. It has a single stereo L/R input and a single S/PDIF optical and coaxial input - both ‘for future use’, but that’s it. It isn’t really a full A/V receiver replacement.
It doesn’t work with the Moxi Mate, so there is no mutli-room support on this product. I think that they got some things very right, but other areas left me scratching my head. I’m really curious as to how they’re going to position it in the market when it launches.
It upscales DVDs - but only to 720p, not 1080i or 1080p like most upscaling DVD players. Why only 720p? No idea. The HDMI output is 1.1, while most newer products have 1.3a at this point. Keep in mind the box isn’t out yet, and it has just gone into beta. One of the reps told me they’d been hoping for an early 2008 release, but that based on feedback during testing it was pushed back to later in the year. See the aforementioned ‘May’ time frame another rep mentioned. Since it was originally due in late 2007, and it seems they did some refreshing of the design from the prototypes shown earlier, I don’t know why they didn’t do a little more work to smooth some of the rough edges.
It just seems like an awkward combination of features, with some odd omissions. It seems to be a Jack of all trades, not quite a master of any. Which might be OK otherwise, but it is being pitched as a premium product, and it is coming to market later than planned so there is more time to get it right. Some specs, like hard drive capacity, have not been finalized yet. Nor has the final pricing. Both will be determined just before release, based on the market at the time.
Then we come to the Moxi Multi-Room HD DMR and associated MoxiMate, which is their flagship product. This is the unit with the expected $1000 price point. While the PC software and the Home Cinema unit are currently both in beta, this unit is not yet in testing. In fact, when I asked about that, one of the Digeo reps said “We just barely got development units of that one.” And this was announced last year for release in late 2007 - sounds like there was quite a delay.
Additionally, while the Moxi TV for PC and Moxi Home Cinema HD DMR units at the show were live and running, the Moxi Multi-Room HD DMRs that I saw were seemingly all dummy units. Some of them had cables connected to the back at the demo stations, seemingly running the demos, but it was being smoke-and-mirrored. The ’shelf’ they sat on had a compartment underneath with an IR transparent white plastic front. Inside that compartment was a Home Cinema box that was really running the demo. The people doing the demos sure made it sound like it was the multi-room box doing the work, which I felt was a little deceptive. Based on the comments from the reps and the state of the units at the show, I got the feeling that the mutli-room boxes are much further behind on the development curve than the two in beta and we won’t see it available until 2H08, maybe late in the year, barring more delays.
Speaking of delays, how about the looks of this box? Bear with me, it ties together. As much as I like the looks of the Home Cinema, I hate the looks of the Multi-room. You might say it is minimalistic - I say it is fugly. Seriously, I think it is an extremely unattractive box. To me it looks cheap, like a lab-mule prototype. It is way too big with that dull, plain face. And it is kind of silver/white - it’d stick out badly next to most A/V gear which tends to be black or silver. Fugly. The same design cues work well enough on the MoxiMate because it is compact, but damn it doesn’t scale well. And I’m not the only one to think so, I over-heard the same thing from a couple of other attendees while I was there.
I even observed a demo being given (to Gizmodo, actually) and they mentioned the looks and size of the box. Digeo’s rep said that it the size was due to the layout of the components in the original design and that they’d decided to stick with it rather than re-do the layout because then they could “bring it to market faster”. Seriously? Mock-ups of the box with the same look and feel were first shown in late 2006, and you had them at CES 2007. Now you have them at CES 2008, and the box won’t be out until sometime later this year. You’ve had major delays, how is that bringing it to market faster? The time was there, this is supposedly a premium box. (I told you it would tie together.) That excuse doesn’t hold, especially for a premium product. Give it the attention due a premium box, re-do the layout to shrink the currently massive size, and get whomever did the industrial design for the Home Cinema box involved to make it look good. Seriously, look at that thing, it has the size and personality of an old desktop PC! If I had any Photoshop skills I’d slap an old IBM PS/2 logo on there. I’d just write it off as a prototype chassis, but Digeo says that’s the intended final look. I wouldn’t want it in my entertainment center.
Functionally, unlike the Home Cinema box, the Multi-room supports a single M-Card CableCARD to support encrypted digital cable on its internal tuners. However, unlike the Home Cinema box, the Multi-room does not support antenna - no ATSC. So that’s one big knock against it compared to TiVo. Why? This is one of the things I don’t understand. They have one box which supports antenna, but not CableCARD, and another box that supports CableCARD but not antenna. TiVo supports both in the Series3 and TiVo HD. Hell, DISH Network supports satellite and ATSC in the VIP622/722 DVRs, and DirecTV supports both in the HR10-250 and HR20 DVRs - and now with the AM21 add-on to the HR21. Even XStreamHD is supporting ATSC on their new satellite product! Digeo, what the hell? This is a ‘premium product’, right? You clearly have the ability to handle ATSC, how much would it really cost you to put ATSC tuning in? Not enough to warrant leaving it out.
My past concerns over the reliance on M-Card are fading with time. By the time this unit ships, M-Card will likely be universally available. When it was originally slated for late 2007, it was a concern as a number of MSOs still weren’t supplying M-Cards and only had S-Cards. It may still be an issue when the box ships, but I suspect it will be in limited areas.
Unlike the Home Cinema unit, this box will upscale DVDs to 1080i, which is the best output resolution it has. That’s decent enough.
Now, the Moxi Mate is a nice concept, as I said above. It is a simple box with no drive and no fan, so it is very quiet. And since it has no moving p
