TiVo 3rd Tuner Activated--For Virgin.

oh that would be awesome, do the retail premieres even have the capability ?

 

Nope the premieres does not have a third tuner only 2.

 

Given the hardware available when the premiere was made it is a chip choice

one chip set can do 2 tuner sets of digital/OTA/analog
other chip set does a set of 3 digital tuners

for an MSO 3 digital tuners is a no brainer

 

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The new premiere-based whole home DVR will have four tuners (in addition to the MoCA and streaming). I suspect that all four tuners will be enabled from the get go.

 

"new premiere-based whole home DVR"

I don't deny something like this will come out someday, but what are you basing this info on?

 

Probably the Suddenlink agreement. They announced last year they were working on a whole home TiVo due out the second half of 2011, and when you combine that with the push for the Tuning Adapter to support a minimum of 4 tuners, it points to 4 tuners. This was the same time they joined the MoCA group.

Now whether or not we will see a retail box who knows. I still wish TiVo had released a Premiere XL with 4 tuners without OTA tuners since they could still have used the same chipsets. They could have then also released a cheap 4 tuner OTA only which would have eliminated the CableLabs cost.

 

From what I remember bkdtv said they have a couple of chipset options. These may have changed though since this was around the launch of the Premiere. Here is one of his posts on it.

On each chipset you have the option of
1 clearqam and 1 OTA
2 clearqam and 0 OTA
0 clearqam and 2 OTA

Since TiVo uses two chips they could have done
2 Clearqam/2 OTA like they did
3 Clearqam/1 OTA which might have confused customers since not an equal number of tuners
4 Clearqam/0 OTA which would have been nice as an option
1 Clearqam/3 OTA again an issue for not being equal
0 Clearqam/4 OTA which might have been nice for those who don't want cable.

The UK chipsets would be different most likely since I believe they use different tuning technology since they don't use things like CableCARD.

 

Offer 3 types of Tivo. Cable, OTA or Mixed.

 

What I said was based upon the internals of the new units (hint: TSN 750 and A90), not the Suddenlink agreement (though that's the public evidence of it).

 

I would definitely welcome it and would upgrade my last TiVo HD for a 4 tuner TiVo.

I wonder though if things like MoCA are still reserved for the MSO box rather than a retail box because previously TiVo said that probably wouldn't see it into a retail model.

 

correct Dan and innocentFreak

save for the fact that due to demodulator limitations you can only do 1 OTA per chip so only 2 OTA tuners as an option

 

Ahh didn't know that part.

 

With OTA waning, they should certainly consider offering a cable only TiVo if they stay in the hardware business.

 

Actually Tivo should push the tuners out of the box and make them USB or Network attached and let people buy what and as many as they want. If Satellite ever gets "cable carded" they could be back in the satellite business by just selling you a dish or direct tuner.

I could see a Series 5 TiVo being a low cost no fee streaming device without DVR functionality built in - if you want it to become a DVR upgrade it by adding external storage & what ever tuners you want. Pay a sub fee that upgrades the software and now you have a DVR. I could also see Google TV devices being built like this if Google ever gets the bugs fixed.

Thanks,

 

Is it?

 

Many believe that it is growing, especially the antenna makers. One story:

http://www.dtvusaforum.com/dtv-hdtv...ularity-mentioned-amateur-radio-newsline.html

 

Supposedly for the people that rely solely on OTA. But the group of people that rely on OTA and say VOD and other online services is probably going up.\

there is no way for OTA only to replace cable/satellite. it needs to be supplemented from online sources to be able to replace cable/satellie.

 

It certainly grew here. We lost our Directv HD channels on Tivo and have been relying on OTA for HD reception.