Any new TiVo hardware on the horizon?

It doesn't seem like there is anything imminent in the pipeline. We might see some kind of "series 4" demo at CES. Given TiVo's track record with CES announcements, anything show at CES 2009 will be available sometime in 2011.

 

yep the "series 4" is a ways away (I call early 2010) and will offer tru2way - which means it would show the cable company VOD/PPV and internally deal with SDV or other things the cable company may come up with. - it looks to still use cable cards to get digital channels though.


so get a Tivo HD today - sounds like you are not worried about digital right now so by the time you do - the dongle to deal with getting SDV (switched Digital Video channels) will be in full swing. It has laready shown up in some markets. That makes VOD/PPV from cable company about the only real new thing you get on the series 4 function wise.

The TiVo HD already does things a sereis 2 can not(aside from digital cable and Digital OTA) in the form of streaming You Tube - and in december streaming Netflix if you have a Netflix subscription.

If it was me I would buy a TiVo HD adn then upgrade the drive on my own to 1 TB. I would not even look at buying a series 2 at this point.

 

Also the Tivo powered Directv HD DVR is coming in 2009.

 

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Any news on a "whole house" TiVo?

AT&T needs some competition in this area.

 

I think tivo's answer is "buy several of our shiny new HD models"

 

I know it has been asked before, but what about a 1 TB My DVR Expander certification? Based on personal history, it should come out within 3 months of me purchasing the 500gb model...Maybe I should buy the 500 gb one now so everyone else can benefit in Q1'09.

 

With the copy protection put on non network programs, that solution "buy several of our shiny new HD models" is not perfect, ATT streams to other TVs so they don't run into this problem.

 

Is there a reason why this could not be accomplished through software upgrades? (In other words, you could use your existing tivos, and the software would allow centralized show scheduling and distribution over ethernet/wireless).

Or is a "whole house tivo" something well beyond that?

 

trust me I know- my local comcast system locks EVERY digital channel except the locals.

But I have to assume tivo is working on a work around.

the scuttlebutt is that netflix streaming uses windows vc1 with windows DRM so the S3's are getting updated to be able to receive windows streams. I *THINK* that windows drm is an acceptable streaming method for cablelabs.

So tivo just has to figure how to get their boxes to send such streams. Maybe they can give up their own tivogaurd (or whatever they are using) and just uses windows drm for their encryption and they'd be half way their. Next just figure out how to send a stream from an existing box.

 

The current TiVo hardware is not suited to distribution. MRV of HD is slower than real-time Since cable cos. like TWC set the copy protection flag, MRV of digital channels is not possible between TiVos.

I just set up a Windows Home Server (WHS) and have put a lot of videos on it. TV is limited to those I buy on DVD or from analog cable channels. There's an add-on for WHS that permits it to act as a server to TiVo's.

 

nah- you could do a "hive" and have it work like that- no problem.
There's already 3rd party tools that allow much of it. There's a hack that asks other boxes if they have a free tuner if a box finds it doesn't have enough tuners. Galleon allows you to send shows from one device to another. The only thing missing would probably be some way to delete something on another box.

But the above mentioned CCI flagging issue is the main problem that needs to get worked around in tivo's current implementation.

interestingly tivo (or at least the dudes that started tivo) have said they originally wanted to go the whole house route but the hardware way back when they started made that impossible. So they went the way they did. With M Cards there's no reason they couldn't make a 6 tuner tivo (probably need to do some raidlike thing to make sure no single drive got overwelmed.)- but i guess they figure at this point they cover most bases with the daul tuners.

I forget if the nero software will work with more then 2 tuners. Maybe it would allow for building a 4 or 6 tuner htpc?