So, will there be a NON-HD Series 3?

Jasoco · 01-07-2006, 11:38 PM

You know, for us people who DON'T have HD and won't have HD for a while and don't want to pay what could end up being $600-700.

bidger · 01-07-2006, 11:45 PM

I think if there were, it would have been announced simultaneously.

Chmeeee · 01-07-2006, 11:50 PM

SDTV isn't going to last much longer as a valid technology, so I wouldn't imagine that they would bother developing a new product to support it. S2 is a perfectly nice piece of hardware anyways.

Jasoco · 01-07-2006, 11:52 PM

I really hope they're not going to leave us unlucky SD users in the dark here. I really really like this.

I mean, I sure as hell ain't paying $600 for something I can't use.

ZeoTiVo · 01-08-2006, 12:02 AM

well if you hook your analog cable up to it , it will record on both tuners or record on one and watch on the other and give you like 200 hours of SD shows.
It will have an ethernet connection for faster TTG and the ability to download mpeg4 content from the internet or play the mpeg4 content from your PC
Plus it is future proofed against the day analog cable is no more

sounds like a kick ass SD recorder to me that I could spring 400$ on. so compare that to the cost of having to go to the digital tier and rent the DVR from your cable company. Long term it is still a better deal.

So that is what I will probably do. wait for the cost to hit 400$ or maybe 600$ if I can move a lifetime over and keep on loving my SD Series 2 TiVo DVRs till then.

Jasoco · 01-08-2006, 12:09 AM

I might agree on $400. I'd have to see it first. But I don't want to have to wait forever for it to drop in price to $400.

I just bought a 40 hour Factory Renewed Series 2 to replace the one I posted about in the help forum. It arrives Wednesday (According to Fedex) so I'll have something to use. But man, I just really want that sweet looking S3.

Edit: Ugh, and I just found out Comcast has stopped allowing non cable box users to get the movie channels! Now I can't watch Starz, HBO or Showtime.

ZeoTiVo · 01-08-2006, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasoco

Edit: Ugh, and I just found out Comcast has stopped allowing non cable box users to get the movie channels! Now I can't watch Starz, HBO or Showtime.

For 10$ a month you can download Starz movies unlimited now and with TiVoToComeBack most likely watch them on your TiVo. Do a google on Starz and Vongo

Jasoco · 01-08-2006, 12:48 AM

I am a Mac user and Vongo is a service directed at Windows users created solely as a competitor to Apple's iTunes Video Store.

Besides, I wouldn't pay a monthly fee on anything Download. It's one time fee/unlimited use (i.e. Pay once to download the show. Watch as much as you want.) or nothing at all.

Thanks anyway.

dswallow · 01-08-2006, 12:52 AM

ATSC really has to be supported so I doubt very much you'll see a Series 3 box without that support, hence all such devices will inherently support HD material.

megazone · 01-08-2006, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bidger

I think if there were, it would have been announced simultaneously.

TiVo didn't really 'announce' the Series3, they were showing it but didn't make any official announcements year.

And, not necessarily anyway.

lajohn27 · 01-08-2006, 11:40 AM

I've crossposted this in several threads...

BUT..

I firmly believe there will be an update to the S2 platform very much along the lines of the TiVO Greater China (TCG) box. That is to say.. something with a higher recording resolution, slightly bigger processor (Intel inside maybe?), bigger HD capacity built in and an internet ethernet port.

The reference design is done and being manufactured. And on sale in China. So porting that to North America is hardly rocket science.

J

shepler76 · 01-08-2006, 12:37 PM

I would love to see a non-HD Series 3. All the same features just not HD and a lower price. I would get the HD version for my HD TV but would like to replace the series 2 in the bedroom that is attached to a digital box, this way I would only need 1 box instead of 2.

Gregor · 01-08-2006, 12:57 PM

My personal belief is that the Series 2 is a soon-to-be end-of-lifed product, and there will be no SD-only Series 3.

With the end of SD broadcasting coming in 3 years it doesn't make any sense to produce a new box just to support SD technology. It's taken TiVo over 2 years to produce a HD tivo for cable, and I just don't seem them splitting efforts on the HD (future) front to spend any resources on SD (past).

However, iirc, the Series 3 does have s-video and composite outputs, so it will support an SD television. I sure hope folks realize in 2009 they're going to need some sort of box to keep their SD televisions alive...

Larry in TN · 01-08-2006, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gregor

With the end of SD broadcasting coming in 3 years

There is no end to SD broadcasting coming anytime soon--at least not until the end of B&W broadcasting. There will be an end to NTSC broadcasting but there will be showing SD content, and broadcasting channels at SD resolution, for many years to come.

It's up to the cable companies as to for how long they will use analog NTSC on their systems.

They certainly could make an ATSC/QAM/CableCard SD TiVo but I'm not sure how much cheaper it would be. I guess the hard drive could be smaller so that would save some money.

Gregor · 01-08-2006, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry in TN

There is no end to SD broadcasting coming anytime soon--at least not until the end of B&W broadcasting. There will be an end to NTSC broadcasting but there will be showing SD content, and broadcasting channels at SD resolution, for many years to come.

It's up to the cable companies as to for how long they will use analog NTSC on their systems.

They certainly could make an ATSC/QAM/CableCard SD TiVo but I'm not sure how much cheaper it would be. I guess the hard drive could be smaller so that would save some money.

Correct, what I am referring to is the end of NTSC broadcasting. Whether or not SD is upconverted or not is unclear as yet, but it will be broadcast in a digital format. Cable companies are trying to rid themselves of analog channels so they can be replaced with digital. On many systems, the premium channels are only available in digital format.

My comments on an SD Series 3 still remain.

lajohn27 · 01-08-2006, 02:13 PM

I think you're wrong.

Millions of consumers will still be using a standard definition television whenever the switchover happens. Most of them will not buy a new television right off.. but rather just get a different box from their cable or satellite provider.

A current S2 or an updated S2 that I spoke of earlier in this thread.. would still be useful for those millions of consumers...

I believe there will be an updated S2 box along the lines of the TIVO Greater China box. And that comment remains.

I originally posted that supposition in mid-December when the details on the TCG box were finally posted on these forums. And I stand by it. In fact, I'll put it in my .sig file for this site till it's proven wrong or right.

J

dswallow · 01-08-2006, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lajohn27

I think you're wrong.

Millions of consumers will still be using a standard definition television whenever the switchover happens. Most of them will not buy a new television right off.. but rather just get a different box from their cable or satellite provider.

A current S2 or an updated S2 that I spoke of earlier in this thread.. would still be useful for those millions of consumers...

I believe there will be an updated S2 box along the lines of the TIVO Greater China box. And that comment remains.

I originally posted that supposition in mid-December when the details on the TCG box were finally posted on these forums. And I stand by it. In fact, I'll put it in my .sig file for this site till it's proven wrong or right.

Do you really think people who won't upgrade TV's and won't go digital with cable are the sorts who'd buy a gadget like TiVo? While there's many OTA-only households in the US, a great number of them are probably OTA-only for financial reasons -- a group wholly unlikely to have disposable income to spend on TiVo or their monthly fees. So yeah, there's millions of potential customers, but far fewer realistically reachable potential customers.

TiVo likely has more insight into their subscription growth and penetration and how many subscribers there are utilizing various cable technologies. But one thing is certain -- their standalone growth isn't stellar. And while it wasn't the biggest income source, their DirecTV growth was much closer to something you could call "stellar." To me that indicates it'd be the higher end customers they should focus on appealing to; I really doubt you'll see them make much effort on the low end except in partnership deals like with Comcast -- though even there it appears to me a focus more on the high end side of Comcast with support for HD programming.

There could very well be an updated Series 2 system, but it'd be getting updated because there was a technology improvement that could make the machine cheaper to build... more like a normal hardware revision over the lifetime of the product. I just don't see any significant investment being made on the low end of their product line until it becomes absolutely necessary.

Gregor · 01-08-2006, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lajohn27

I think you're wrong.

Millions of consumers will still be using a standard definition television whenever the switchover happens. Most of them will not buy a new television right off.. but rather just get a different box from their cable or satellite provider.

A current S2 or an updated S2 that I spoke of earlier in this thread.. would still be useful for those millions of consumers...

I believe there will be an updated S2 box along the lines of the TIVO Greater China box. And that comment remains.

I originally posted that supposition in mid-December when the details on the TCG box were finally posted on these forums. And I stand by it. In fact, I'll put it in my .sig file for this site till it's proven wrong or right.

J

I could very well be, but I just don't see a market for SD video. It wouldn't be the first time Tivo has done something that I didn't understand but I can't imagine there's a profit in it.

atmuscarella · 01-08-2006, 04:51 PM

I found some data on TVs that I thought was interesting, In the USA:

As of 2005:

109,600,000 households had TVs
73,930,000 households where wired for cable (67.5% of all house holds with TVs)
35,120,000 households paid for cable (32.0% of all house holds with TVs)
Total TVs in USA was 287,000,000

As of 2002 only 4,755,000 Digital/HD TVs had been sold (total all years) - in 2002 22,469,000 SD TVs were sold. In a very good year about 25,000,000 TVs are sold.

The above information came from: http://www.tvb.org/rcentral/mediatre...Television.asp

As a side note I was in Walmart a few days back they were selling a 27inch RCA Digital TV with a built Digital Tuner (ATSC) for $280 and guess what it was SD not HD.

I believe most people will be watching TV on a SD TV for years and cable/satellite/OTA digital signals will be converted for use on analog SD TVs just as long.

What does the above mean for TiVo - who nows - but I would think having both SD and HD products for quit a few years will make sense.

Thanks,

atmuscarella

quango · 01-08-2006, 05:14 PM

I think the issue with a non-HD Series 3 is that once you've done the work to add an ATSC/QAM "SD" tuner, adding the HD tuning capability is trivial. Reduce the hard drive space to 40-80 GB, and effectively you have a non-HD unit. Get rid of the component and HDMI outputs if you want to make it explicitly non-HD.

Having said that, there is a ATSC tuner mandate: by March 1, 2007, all consumer electronics devices manufactured for sale in the US with an NTSC tuner must also provide an ATSC over-the-air tuner. So, TiVo will have to either discontinue the Series 2, add an ATSC over-the-air tuner (which is 90% of the work needed to build the Series 3 anyway), or replace it with a Series 2 that cannot tune NTSC either (i.e. can only work with a cable/satellite box). The first option is by far the most likely.

dylanemcgregor · 01-08-2006, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dswallow

Do you really think people who won't upgrade TV's and won't go digital with cable are the sorts who'd buy a gadget like TiVo? While there's many OTA-only households in the US, a great number of them are probably OTA-only for financial reasons -- a group wholly unlikely to have disposable income to spend on TiVo or their monthly fees. So yeah, there's millions of potential customers, but far fewer realistically reachable potential customers.

Just speaking from my personal experience, which I realize is not a random sample, I know about 20 people with TiVos. 2 of them have satellite, 2 have digital cable, 4 or OTA only, and the rest are various levels of analog cable. The majority of the people I know with analog cable and OTA have it both because of cost (they can not justify spending $60 a month or more for TV) but they also do not want another box to control watching TV.

I myself am adamantly opposed to being forced into getting an additional box. My hope\expectation is that by the time the switchover happens downloadable TV is much further along and broadcast TV is on the way to becoming a memory. If not I might just give up TV for a couple of years until then.

-Dylan

lajohn27 · 01-08-2006, 06:20 PM

I can only add that the vast majority of people I know with cable - have analog cable only. Most of them can afford more.. they just don't want more. But they do want (or have) TIVO to maximize their viewing experience.

Try to think of a TIVO more like a VCR and less like a fancy tech device. Because that's how these very non-digital friends of mine see it.

So yes, I think those analog cable users are likely to buy a TIVO. And I think that the current box will be sold into the marketplace in one form or another for some time yet to come.

And to reiterate.. the Taiwan box already has a reference design, a manufacturing spec and is being manufactured. Porting this over to the North American market would not be difficult.

Further, it has been said that the TIVO Greater China deal was more about TIVO getting a beach-head in China so that they could benefit from certain export rules for manufactured pieces to North America.

Which again - would greatly lower costs for hardware regardless of S2 or S3.

And then there is the Canadian market which TIVO has recently begun supporting. They haven't sold any hardware into this market (yet) but they say they will before June of 2006. And cablecard will not be an option in Canada till 2010 at least.. leaving people craving the TIVO experience.. with just the S2 (or its replacement) as an option.

gastrof · 01-08-2006, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shepler76

I would love to see a non-HD Series 3. All the same features just not HD and a lower price...

Standard Def NTSC channels are to be discontinued in the United States in a few years.

The series 3 supposedly will have NTSC tuners in it, so it must be able to record SD channels. This gives the machine usefullness now and later.

classicsat · 01-08-2006, 08:50 PM

First off, I don't see what people that don't care for HD, would want an S3 (as demoed), that an S2 couldn't do.

That said, depending on the design of the 648 (demoed CES S3) unit, one could strip down the production to one tuner set (one digital, one analog), HD out, HDD size reduced, and the drop the OLED display, to make a cheaper SD only version of it (644?).

Or they could redesign the S2 platform to include an ATSC/QAM/Cablecard tuner (and include ethernet this time), and pacify those that still use external STBs, that want the "next thing".

I do have a feeling there could be new hardware outside of the 648, as they are holding out to release something to Canada, as the 648 is practically unuseable here.

Justin Thyme · 01-08-2006, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lajohn27

And to reiterate.. the Taiwan box already has a reference design, a manufacturing spec and is being manufactured. Porting this over to the North American market would not be difficult.

Hand the man a cigar. TGC's manufacturer is USI- they manufacture boards in Mainland China, and have an assembly plant in Tijuana, so boxes could come in under Nafta, should that card ever be needed.

I see your prediction and raise you. They'll execute on the 2004 plan that Humax backed out of.

Yep- An S3 in a HDTV flat screen built in Mainland China. Why a perfect match? Just try and sell a noname chinese flat screen against a Samsung or Apple Viiv Flat screen and there will be a lot of skepticism. Sell it with the Tivo brand, and they stores won't be able to stock enough of them. Put an S2 in an EDTV and you have a DVR 42 inch Flatscreen for just over $1000. Maybe less.

But we know all this. The hardware costs are shared with the flat screen- don't need a power supply, the circuit board can be shared with that of the Flatscreen- you can throw out parts because no display out connections need be made, you share the IR input, etc etc etc.

lajohn27 · 01-08-2006, 10:22 PM

Bold Justin - Bold -- on the prediction.

I just can't help but thing that the TIVO Greater China deal is way more than meets the eye. Especially considering that the former head of all things techy at TIVO, Ta Wai Chien (or something similar) is now the CEO and Grand Poobah of TCG.

Coincidence? I think not.

Also.. check out www.tgc-usa.com an interesting site for sure..

Now I've seen that much.. I'm convinced Justin is on the right 'thinking path' here.. probably way moreso than I was.

Justin Thyme · 01-08-2006, 11:39 PM

You can bet money Apple will announce a flat panel with Viiv inside to smooth the way with Hollywood. Heck that's almost what their latest computers are anyway. Steve is just hanging it on the wall and suggesting everyone get plugged into iTunes instead of their carriers.

And some Macaholics will- god help them- (and their credit card limits).

God help us- some Tivoholics will buy a Tivo embedded in a Flat panel. I don't know how soon mind you- but a Tivo embedded in a flat screen is as inevitable as the sun coming up in the morning.

elrcastor · 01-09-2006, 12:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lajohn27

Bold Justin - Bold -- on the prediction.

I just can't help but thing that the TIVO Greater China deal is way more than meets the eye. Especially considering that the former head of all things techy at TIVO, Ta Wai Chien (or something similar) is now the CEO and Grand Poobah of TCG.

Coincidence? I think not.

Also.. check out www.tcg-usa.com an interesting site for sure..

Now I've seen that much.. I'm convinced Justin is on the right 'thinking path' here.. probably way moreso than I was.

It's supposed to be http://www.tgc-usa.com/

dswallow · 01-09-2006, 12:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lajohn27

Also.. check out www.tcg-usa.com an interesting site for sure.

Am I missing something? I didn't find anything interesting on that site... basically two paragraphs of moderately generic MBA-speak, a list of some of the principals involved and a listing of a couple job openings.

dmdeane · 01-09-2006, 03:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dswallow

Do you really think people who won't upgrade TV's and won't go digital with cable are the sorts who'd buy a gadget like TiVo?

Yes. I'm one of them. I have no desire (currently) to pay extra for what's on digital cable and I don't have any desire (currently) to replace a perfectly fine, functioning 7 year old analog TV set. I can wait. Whereas I could not wait to get TiVo because it makes it possible to watch the TV shows I want to watch which I could not have watched otherwise. I know plenty of other people like me. This is strictly anecdotal evidence but I think TiVo has done some market research on this topic which is why they are pushing to get the analog cable TV consumers to buy TiVos - it's an area where TiVo can add value to consumers not interested in cable co.'s digital TV DVRs.