Any Plans for a HD Tivo DVD Recorder?

[jony]

I have the Humax DRT800 and love the ability to not only record my programs to DVD, but also play DVDs using the Tivo remote and tivo menus. I'm about to upgrade to HDTV and wonder if there are any plans for a HD Tivo DVD Recorder? In fact, a Blu Ray DVD recorder would be nice. Or is such a unit held up until the Blu Ray/ HD-DVD battle shakes out?

[jrm01]

There are Blu Ray recorders out there, as long as you have $10,000 sitting around looking for a home.

[Chester_Lampwick]

I plan on buying one, but I don't know if TiVo plans on making one. Perhaps we should send TiVo cheques post-dated December 2008 for $1000 conditional on sale of HD TiVO with HD-DVD recorder.

[ashu]

I'll sign my check and postdate it ... if they use BluRay ;)

[MediaLivingRoom]

if they do, can they add "lightscribe" to that?

[Chester_Lampwick]

Dudes, like I said write that into the requirements for the cheque.

[ivyvine420]

If one ever comes out, it will be DVD-ROM only. Or major changes have to take place in the Entertainment Industry first, for it to happen...

Or have you already forgotten the law that went into effect 2 (?) years ago that said all standard definition was legally allowed to be copied for personal use (onto computer, DVD etc) but that they put their "Foot Down" with HD programming, you can't legally make copies of it OR built your own HD recorder (people could build their own up until that specific date listed, it was in June/July I think 2005). They were basically making it so that to build these units, you had to get "permission" of some kind (a license or whatever), making it so that only large companies could really do it.

It was stated that the quality of standard Analog or Digital was poor enough that people would watch it but would still rather purchase higher quality items for personal collections. I currently have a Humax DRT-800, and had it for about 6 months when I was reading about this in a newspaper one day. It basically said in the article that while HD units (DVRs/DVD Players/Burners etc) can be made and used to record to hard drive (in cases like DVRs and Computers with TV Tuners), but that the recorded HD content *could not* then be transfered to any other medium (DVD, other hard drive/storage etc).

If my DRT-800 was HD, a 80hr (would be laughable for HD content), single tuner, with DVD player/burner combo, then while it could "record" to the tivo in HD, it would not be able to be burned to a DVD with the built-in dvd burner like you can currently with standard analog/digital programming.

This is most likely one of the main reasons that the TTG and GoBack have not been enabled for Series 3 machines (though GoBack could be done, and should, and TTG and MRV should be enabled to allow the transfer of STANDARD analog/digital programming (we shouldn't be denied this ability on the S3 for stuff the S2 can do). They were supposed to start "flagging" programming, which would encode into the program being recorded whether it was allowed to be transfered or not (like the copy protection on CNET and Heavy and such), but having it have an HD flag so that when trying to transfer or burn to DVD, the flag would stop it from being able to do so, yet then standard programming would be flagged with an "ok" to transfer/burn/etc. This seems to not have happened, when it is the most likely easiest thing to do and have it cover the whole industry and not make a difference what cable/satellite/OTA you were using.

Until they actually do something like that (and way before that, actually get the standard programming going with S3 units with TTG/GoBack - the easiest- and MRV), we are most likely not going to see a Tivo with a built-in HD DVD burner of any kind (and if I were to make one with a HD player only, then I would go with both formats like that one from LG for about $1000, and Samsung has a dual player in the works now too).

Actually, with Samsung now letting it out that they are going dual, alot of people are getting upset as this could destroy hopes of a quick format war - especially since Samsung was a big backer of Blu-Ray until this...
Samsung's player should be out later this year, and possibly is just a single drive that can play both formats compared to LG's recent release which I believe has 2 drives in it, one for each format.

[sarahdkelly]

Thanks for the info. I was hoping for a S3 DVD recorder also. I just love my DRT-800 but when I am forced to upgrade to digital cable (comcast says it will be within a year or so - as they phase out 3-4 channels every 3-4 months) I wont be able to use it anymore. I am still in denial. I love having the tivo navigation on my dvd's!! What ever will we do? :confused:

[ivyvine420]

Why won't the DRT800 work after upgrading to Digital Cable? I am assuming that you currently use a cable box with this unit (if not, then you already can't receive the higher digital/encrypted channels with it)...

If you are using analog only service with Comcast, then I can understand that this will seem like a big change, but I have been using Comcast Digital (mix of analog and digital) with a digital cable box for the past 3.5 years, with 4 months of that having no tivo, 9 months using a 40hr Series 2 (our first tivo unit), then upgraded to the DRT800 and have used that for about 2.5 years (both series 2 used input from the cablebox), and still have it running as well as our new Series 3 unit (with cablecards) for the past 2 months.

In fact, I was just thinking about getting another Tivo (180 hr Dual Tuner Series 2) so that I can use it with the (free for 1 year) On Demand box unit that should arrive here from Comcast soon which is basically a cablebox (but smaller) and lets you add on demand to extra tv sets without having the fuss of a big cable box unit to use. This is because I do miss using the On Demand stuff, as well as the TTG and TTGB, plus we could actually use the MRV feature too (I can't wait anymore for it all to be enabled on the S3...).

Also, been having cable card issues lately that have been making premium channels disappear due to host validation issues, and having another tivo with 2 tuners (at least one for premium is good enough) as a back up and for things that I am currently getting my computer with it's USB tuner to record (I don't like the ms-dvr format that much, and the quality is never quite as good as any tivo can get it with the medium quality setting even) would be nice.

So I don't see how "all digital" service from Comcast will change the ability to use the Humax DRT800 (or the DT Series 2 units), when there has been no problem with the digital channels yet in the past few years... If there is some weird thing that will make older Series 2 (and Series 1) units not to be able to handle the all digital system in the future, then please, let me know now.

As for the Tivo Navigation Menus on burned DVD's... It is a great thing to have, and I tend to wish that even some of my retail bought box sets had a nice quick (and easy to use) tivo style menu system and didn't make me wait for 2 minutes before booted to the main menu and then having to possibly go through countless sub-menus just to get to the "play this episode" option, heh.