Best Buy has begun selling a Blu-ray deck under their in-house Insignia brand, the Insignia NS-BRDVD. This is very likely another variant of the Funai NB500. That would mean it is Bonus View/Profile 1.1 only, no BD-Live/Profile 2.0. And the Magnavox NB500NG9, a Funai NB500 variant, sells for $298 at Wal*Mart, so that’s a better value. In fact, the Samsung BD-P1500, which is ‘BD-Live Ready’, sells for $348 at Wal*Mart, and a 40GB PS3, which is a better BD deck and a gaming system, is $399 (with a free movie and remote through today). So there really isn’t a good reason to buy one of these.

But it is still nice to see the general trend for more Blu-ray players hitting the market with lower prices.

Via EngadgetHD.

Well, we knew Digeo would be showing off their Moxi box for cable MSOs at The Cable Show. Back in January when I spoke with Digeo’s then-COO Greg Gudorf, he said that their Moxi HD DVR for cable would ship in 1Q08, clearly that didn’t happen. Now, according to a press release issued today, Charter will be the first cable MSO to deploy the Moxi Cable HD DVR 3012 - in 3Q08. It isn’t surprising that Charter is the first customer as they were one of the MSOs to deploy the first generation Moxi units, and Digeo is backed by Paul Allen, who also controls Charter. A little corporate nepotism. I just hope Digeo does better than FlipStart, which seems to be comatose.

Ben Drawbaugh from EngadgetHD was at The Cable Show and he got a picture of the unit on display. Is it just me, or does it look like a slightly shorter (no optical drive so I guess they didn’t need the room) version of the now defunct Moxi Multi-Room HD DMR? Only in black instead of white. I have to admit, while I thought the Mutli-Room HD DMR was hideous, this one is only bland. The change in color helps.

According to the press release:

The announcement marks the first order and deployment of Digeo’s second generation offering which incorporates a dual HD-tuner digital video recorder (DVR). The Moxi 3012 also includes the Emmy(R) award-winning Moxi Menu user interface, along with the following advanced features:

* Full DVR functionality
* CableCARD(R) multi-stream 2-way support
* Remote web scheduling capable
* External storage options up to 1TB
* Extensive data mining through the Moxi portal for real-time customer usage insights

So it is a dual-tuner CableCARD DVR. Sounds like it relies on M-Card, which fits with what was known about their canceled consumer products. They don’t disclose the internal storage capacity, but given the ‘3012′ naming scheme, I’d guess at 120GB. ‘Remote web scheduling capable’ is interesting, but the question is will Charter enable it? They don’t say if the external storage is USB or eSATA, and I can’t tell from Ben’s photo. The data mining is both intriguing and worrying. Is it anonymized? Just how much data do they track? How personal is it? Some people dislike even TiVo’s anonymized, aggregated data collection. And this is ‘extensive’ and ‘real-time’.

While they mention 2-way CableCARD support, they don’t specifically mention what is supported - SDV? VOD? PPV? I’d venture a guess that SDV is supported, since the Tuning Resolver Adapter is close to finalized. They could build that capability into the box. Since this isn’t a consumer device and the software can, and probably will, be customized for each MSO, I think it is reasonable to expect they’ll be supporting VOD & PPV. But without an OCAP platform I don’t know about advanced cable services in general.

And, according to the press release, Digeo is continuing to work on an OCAP/tru2way version of their Moxi platform.

I have Charter, though they never offered Moxi in my neck of the woods. If they do start offering this Moxi 3012 in my area I’ll get one, at least for a while, to see how it fares.

EDIT: I received the following via the contact form after originally posting this:

On your press release of the 3012 I have a few answers to your speculation

1) Remote scheduling will be enabled, current Digeo Moxi 9012 users already enjoy this feature. Scheduling is done by logging into the charter.net portal with your charter.net email address and going to the TV section. First time users will have to associate the box with their email there.

Unfortunately at this time it requires that the customer have our High Speed Data product in addition to the DVR and that both services be on the same account.

2) Expansion
This is already an option on the older 9012 and 9022 boxes as well. Currently the older boxes only supported USB expansion. I would assume that the 3012 is the same (unless it has eSATA ports)

3) 3012 model name.
Unless Digeo’s changed their naming scheme the 12 in 3012 should stand for 1 TV, 2 Tuners.

In the 9000 series there were two models, 9012 and 9022. The 9022 supported two TVs through the usage of a “moxi mate” box

I’m guessing givng the 9022 configuration that the 3012 should have no less than a 160 gig base hard drive (to compete with the Motorola 6416 which offers 160 gigs)

Hope this information is helpfull!

James Doster
Digital Coordinator
Charter Communications

The press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on his report on the Motorola MTR700, Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD has posted photos of the corresponding Cisco/Scientific Atlanta STA1520 Tuning Adapter. While Motorola’s TA was part of a working demo, the Cisco box is just a static display, not connected to anything. While it has the same connections, the Cisco box is physically much larger than the Motorola TA. And while Motorola indicated that their TA could be available to cable MSOs in July, Cisco is only saying 3Q2008.

Still, progress is being made. Be patient a little while longer all you folks with SDV issues.

EngadgetHD is down at The Cable Show and Ben Drawbaugh (the lucky SOB) got a little hands-on time with the Motorola MTR700 Tuning Adapter for SDV. It seems that CableLabs has decided to start calling such devices ‘Tuning Adapters’ instead of the previous ‘Tuning Resolver’. (I prefer Tuning Resolver, such is life.) The MTR700 was named before the change, which makes me wonder if they’ll rename it the MTA700 before release.

As we’ve known for a while, the Motorola TA looks just like their DCT700 cable box. It is a very simple device with only five connections - coax in, coax out, USB, a diagnostics port, and power. In the demo it is connected in series with the TiVo HD cable into the MTR700, then out of the TA into the TiVo, and the USB connection to the TiVo. Ben reports that it works perfectly, tuning SDV channels transparently with no apparent delay compared to linear channels. He also says it should be available to cable MSOs in July, as I previously predicted, but no firm details on consumer availability or pricing yet.

All in all it sounds like good news. Maybe Ben can see if Cisco has their STA1520 on display as well.

You might want to hold off on buying the Funai Blu-ray player from my last post. The Samsung BD-P1500, expected in June, is showing up in Wal*Mart with a $348 price tag - the expected MSRP was $399. That’s just $50 more than the Funai/Magnavox deck, and the Samsung is ‘BD-Live Ready’. That means it will ship with Profile 1.1, aka ‘Bonus View’, support but it has the hardware (such as a Ethernet port) required for Profile 2.0/BD-Live, and support will be enabled via a firmware update later this year. The firmware update will also add DTS-HD audio support.

While a sub-$300 price tag is nice, for $50 I’d definitely opt for the Samsung.

Via EngadgetHD.

Rumored last September, and announced in January, Funai’s first entry into the Blu-ray player market is beginning to appear on store shelves with an MSRP below $300. The Funai NB500 Blu-ray player has appeared on Wal*Mart shelves as the Magnavox NB500NG9 with a $298.00 price. The player is Profile 1.1 aka Bonus View, so no BD-Live capabilities. But it is the lowest priced Profile 1.1 player, by far.

Funai OEMs hardware for a number of brands. The NB500 is also the Sylvania NB500SL9, and is expected to appear under the Emerson, Insignia, and Pye brands as well. The owner’s manual for the Magnavox deck is available online as a PDF. According to the manual (page 14), the system is capable of bitstreaming advanced audio codecs such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD HR/MA over HDMI, but it cannot internally decode them. If LPCM output is selected instead, then Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD fall back to Dolby Digital, and DTS-HD falls back to DTS. A similar fall-back happens if you use the coaxial digital output for audio instead of HDMI. Video output is supported as 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p/60, and 1080p/24.

All in all it doesn’t seem like a bad player, if you can forgo BD-Live, for under $300.

From Blu-ray.com via EngadgetHD.