TiVo at CES 2010

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Apparently it was only in the Hotel that was hosting CES where the event holders had influence.

 

Yeah, just looked back at my calendar, it seems like I had a meeting in every hotel BUT the Vanician (where there was CES stuff as you say)

 

I know this is probably not the right place for this, but being a possible Ces fall out related question, I'll ask.

I purchased 2 tivo Hd boxes on black Friday for 199 each. I toyed around with whether I should open them or not for almost a month. I found a faq thread on this forum which said there's a 7 day trial with the Tivo's and if we didn't like them we could just return them. I opened and set them up to find I needed the cable cards(which I knew originally but somehow forgot since they were in the boxes for over a month and opening them was like a kid with a new toy at x-mas). I went to my local Cox cable to pick up some cable cards and get them going since my 7 day trial was now ticking down. Cox argued with me on how Tivo's don't require cable cards and I just needed to swap my cox dvr's for regular hd boxes which would feed the Tivo's. LOL I argued with the guy for 15 mins and finally made him take one of the Motorola boxes out from behind the counter so I could show him where their own boxes had M cards in them.
Once convinced he told me that a tech needed to come out and set them up.(not sure why as I knew more then them from 1 night of reading on this forum)

My question is, should I keep both boxes setup and now pay to have them activated at a 1 year rate, or just keep 1 of them for now and return the other, just in case a new version is released in a month or 2? (keeping in mind that I only paid 199.00 each for them in the first place)
Does anyone know if there's a new"upgraded" box in the works for sure or is it all speculation?
I also bought 2 wireless cards at the same time but got raped at 69.99 each, so I'll defiantly be returning them to BB with the 1 box. Amazon has them for 40.00 so I'll grab them there. (unless someone knows a cheaper place)

Again, I know this is in the wrong place, but only have a few days left to be able to return these if needed. Catching up on all this Tivo stuff is tough, this forum would take years to go through.lol
Thanks in advance for your opinions! Flame suit on.lol

 

When the CES was in Chicago, before the McCormick place annex was built, they used to OFFICIALLY have demos in the suites in the adjacent hotel for high end audio like Mark Levinson in particular. I spotted Henry Kloss hisself once.

The locations were in the show directory.

 

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Welcome to the forum

Speculation is all we have at the moment. If you read some of the newer threads in this forum, you probably know as much as anyone.

Here are some things to consider.

Once taking Tax into account, your $199 "deal" at bestbuy is probably equivalent to what Amazon is selling them for ($219)

Did you already get your cablecards installed? As your cable company doesn't allow for new self installs, will you have to pay again if they come out to install new equipment?

Does the current TiVo do everything you want it to do?

 

I have no insider info, but there is speculation that Tivo has something coming.
One member of this forum got a TivoHD, and there was an insert inside the box which gave instructions on how to install a cable card in the "Tivo Premier".
So, if you were to take my suggestion, I'd say to return one unit and use the other to make sure you like it. Then do a wait and see for the new unit.
My $.02.

 

I thought the point was that all the broadcasters are sending a digital signal now. So even if the cable company has an analog channel. They are taking a digital signal and converting it to analog. Then the DVR is taking the analog signal and converting it back to digital.
So just avoid any conversion and record the digital signal. At least that's what I thought was the point.

For me, I'll stick with my TiVos. I was recording HD broadcasts with my PC back in 2001 and moved on from PC based recordings. I currently have no desire to go back to PC based recordings but you never know.
Although my ideal box would handle everything. I would love for my new media players to be able to play the encypted TiVo files and just have one box to access everythign with a TiVo interface.

 

DIfference is only one of them is really making any money.

 

Because, I (sometimes) *want* a lower quality copy. I admittedly am recording *some* things on my Tivo with cablecards because of the better quality picture [ignoring artifacts, which do sometimes happen and IMHO digital artifacts are way worse than analog artifacts].. But for *most* of the things I record, I would gladly prefer the less space used over the (usually) better picture.

I record practically everything (in analog) in Basic quality. Tivo Basic recordings seem to be about half as big as the lowest quality digital recordings. I have a mostly full 1 TB drive on my *analog only* S3.. The TivoHD (which has the cablecards) has the stock drive for now. Yes, I can/should upgrade my TivoHD's drive..

and I admit I am thinking strongly about getting cablecards for the S3 too (looks like it might be just $1.70/month, since I'd move the 2 S cards from my TivoHD and get an M card for the TivoHD).. But I still would like the *option* of recording analog.

I realize it'll never happen, and is fairly low on my list of things with Tivo that should be fixed. (Don't get me wrong, Tivo is in the top few electronic devices I've ever owned, I still think there are a million things that could be better.) Heck, even if it tuned it in analog, and then digitized THAT as Tivo Basic, I'd get the better picture AND disk savings, both.

 

Thanks for the replies guy's.
To answer your questions. Yes Cox came out and we did the cable card installs on both boxes, they are both up and running now and on the 7 day trial. I was lucky though and they only charged me the install charge for 1 card which was like 45.00. They said they were technically supposed to charge me 90.00 for both. The tech also installed an amp since my house has the line split several times and I was concerned that I might end up with signal issues. He spent like 3-4 hrs here testing every outlet.

I have 1 day left before the Tivos lock up and I'll have to pay for the subscriptions. If I were to return 1 of the boxes I would probably keep the cable card out of it and pay the couple dollars a month rental on it. That way I can install it into the new box when and if it comes out. I'm sure they will want someone to come out again but I might be able to just call the tech line and get them to just activate it if I do the self install. I know all the info they will be looking for since I helped the tech setup these 2 now. They use the excuse that they don't stock the cable cards at the retail store and only the techs carry them because of the difficulty installing them, I'll already have one and will explain to the tech line that I can give him all the needed info.
Well I at least hope so. I guess we will have to see. The good thing here is that I wanted them to take back one of my cox dvrs and leave me a standard Hd cable box so we can still get the on demand stuff, well since my dvr is the older Motorola DCT-6412 III they were able to just turn off the dvr function with a flash from the hub, so now I can just call and have them enable it for me again and not lose a dvr during the waiting period.
Thanks for the advice guys. I hope I can still return it since BB has extended return time for stuff bought on Black Friday.

 

Thanks for all the good info>

 

I would do the same. Just don't volunteer any information. As far as you're concerned, the cable card quit working. They don't need to know why, that's their problem to figure out. It's up to them to get it working again.

 

Weird. In the recent past, the high end audio demos were at the Alexis Park suites. We're talking brands like Mark Levinson and Meridian. You can't properly demo audio equipment very well on the noisy show floor anyway. (I only went to this part of the show once myself.)

They then moved to the Venetian. This stuff was even mentioned in the official show maps and directories.

 

One needs to only look at the DirecTivo forums the past couple years to find them and some have posted in this very thread. It's kinda funny actually. But anyway...

 

No. But most if not all the contemporary TV output will originate from Digital sources. Even if the cable co coverts it to Analog for retransmission.

If Comcast in your area moves the way Comcast Bay Area did you'll lose all but analog versions of broadcast chanels soon enough.

Valid reason. Though IMHO by using the tools such as pyTivo you could record in Digital, transcode to mp4 and push back a much smaller copy with better quality than the Tivo Basic analog recording.

 

That's too much work.

 

Was that intended as sarcasm? I've got kmttg and pyTivo installed, and they both run without any intervention on my part. I enjoy commercial free viewing because of these two apps. If it was sarcasm, it's a hard thing to pull off in written word.

 

No it's not intended to be sarcasm. How hard was it to get all that up and running? Would the average person be able to do it?

 

no

it requires super-human abilities and an endless supply of candy bars

 

In today's economy you can hire the human and feed him candy bars.