SDV -- The elephant in the room

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And if you read some of the other SDV threads, SDV may come to the S3 and TiVo HD anyway. Both TiVo and the cable industry have stated that they are working together on a solution to support SDV on unidirectional CableCARD devices such as the S3 and TiVo HD.

 

Talk is cheap.

 

Well, here's the result of my visit from the CableCARD gods: I get all the channels I got with the TWC DVR, minus PPV and VOD, obviously.

So for now, I was jumping the gun on SDV ruining my TiVo HD experience. However, I now have a different problem. As I've seen many times on other threads, many upper tier digital channels through CableCARD number 2 are severely pixelated; to the point of being pretty much unviewable.

I do tech support for a living, so instead of pissing me off, the pixelated channel thing gives me a challenge!

 

Just to clarify... I could not have been more wrong about the pace of SDV deployment. TWC here in Cincinnati is on an SDV rampage and has already locked away no less than 5 new HD channels and has explicitly stated that EVERY new HD intro will be on SDV and unavailable to UDCP devices. My TiVo HD feels like a $600 brick. Sorry if my advice/perspective led ANYONE to think this would work out fine. I was completely wrong and regret it.

 

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Have you lost any of the channels that you already had? If not, how is your TiVo a brick?

 

if i had paid $600 for an HD dvr and it couldn't record all my HD channels I would consider mine to be a expensive doorstop.

 

Would it be ok to be upset if a single existing HD channel had been removed? Because that is frequently happening as well. But it seems reasonable to be upset when a brand new DVR that is currently still being sold today can't do what it was advertised to do only months\weeks\days after buying it.

 

It's stupid to buy something with the anticipation that you'll be able to do things with it in the future that you couldn't when you bought it, unless the manufacturer gave firm guarantees that you could. The way that I see it, if you lose channels then you've got just cause to piss and moan; if not, you're no worse off than you were before, and if it was worth $600 before it's still worth it now. They're not "your" HD channels if you never had equipment that could access them before.

When I bought my TiVo I knew that SDV was coming and what it meant, but there wasn't much choice--if I had to use the DVR offered by my cable company, I'd probably just stop watching television and save the money. As it is, I've actually gained a couple of channels since buying my TiVo (National Geo HD and TBS HD). I expect though that I'll end up not being able to access some new channels added in the future if they don't introduce the proposed "tuning resolver" in time. If they take existing channels that I use and start presenting them as SDV, I'm going on a rampage.

 

It was never advertised to be able to record channels that cable companies were presenting as SDV because no one was doing it. And yes, you have my permission to be upset if a single one of the channels that you use is removed .

 

I don't believe I have seen a single asterik on the box or in any Tivo ads that says, "This DVR will not support any channels that are supplied using switched digital video. You should contact your cable company before purchasing." Without such warning it seems reasonable to assume the general public would expect it to record ESPN2 if they get ESPN2 on their cable company DVR just fine.

 

I think, though, that that's a pretty draconian perspective. It is like saying that if you had a computer that didn't have enough CPU power for some of the more advanced video games that it was a "doorstop", even though the computer can still very effectively do word processing, play DVDs, etc. I think this is a critical point -- the distinction between the catastrophic incapability being implied and the marginal incapability that is the reality.

 

This renders me (nearly ) speechless. Do you really think that it's reasonable to expect your TiVo to be able to handle any arbitrary new technology that the cable providers should decide to throw at it? Are they supposed to anticipate every possible new technology and put an asterisked list of them on the box? If your cable provider starts using QAM 1024 and some funky new wavelet-based encoding scheme tomorrow are you going to be pissed off at TiVo if your S3 or THD can't handle it? It's a unidirectional CableCARD device which complies to a thick stack of standards that the FCC requires for "Digital Cable Ready" labelling. SDV is something new that goes beyond those requirements, which doesn't even work the same from cable system to cable system. It's a non-standardized system and neither TiVo or any other general purpose OEM device can be expected to work without standards.

Does TiVo have a warning on the box that it doesn't work with IPPV or VOD on your cable system? Did you expect it to?

Nothing ever was or ever will be future proof. If your cable company starts using SDV blame them (and the FCC for letting them do it), not TiVo. In the end, if you buy TiVo and bring it home and it doesn't work with all of the capabilities of your cable system, then you're free to take it back and get a refund. If, at the time of purchase, it worked with everything that your cable system offered that you were interested in and they subquently make changes that it can't deal with then its not TiVo's fault.

 

I know that the Resolver has been described as a USB dongle, but I don't understand why tivos with access to high-speed would need any new hardware at all. Why can't they just communicate upstream over the net?

 

The Tivo could communicate upstream over the net. The problem is that the cable providers wouldn't be listening.

The dongle, to be useful, must use a commuinications method that the cable companies have agreed to listen to.

Al

 

It might sound draconian. But after $2000 for the TV and $600 for the S3 just so I can record the Gators playing in HiDef, if I can't even view the Gators in HiDef then I still need another HD DVR. So why would I keep paying for the S3? Do you really expect me to sit there and constantly swap between inputs when I'm channel surfing just so I can keep using the S3 for the analog channels? Other than selling it to someone else it wouldn't serve a purpose in my house. If my computer could no longer surf the internet and that is what I bought it to do, it would also be a doorstop. Because I would have to buy a new computer.

 

Tivo knew SDV was coming when they started selling the S3. It's not like it was invented after they started selling them. They have known about the problem for quite some time now. Clearly today they know about the problem and they are still selling HD Tivos as if the problem doesn't exist with no warning to the consumer. If they don't come up with a tuning resolver soon expect some scumbag lawyer to start the class action process.

 

The $2000 for the television is utterly irrelevant with regard to the TiVo.... it's like someone yelling at the theme park employee about how much they spent to fly to the city where the theme park is. Beyond that, my point was the distinction between the catastrophic incapability being implied and the marginal incapability that is the reality. I think people wouldn't respond negatively to expressions of disappointment if they were kept in reasonable perspective.

 

What about the folks in Hawaii who are losing ALL non-broadcast HD channels to SDV? That seems pretty catastrophic to me.

 

For what it's worth, they won't be losing the local HD affiliates.

 

Which is the majority of what most folks watch, these days, so again, the device is therefore still not "a brick" or a "doorstop". Again, it comes down to projecting a reasonable perspective, rather than resorting to hyperbole.