It’s finally happening, Switched Digital Video is live – at least, a bit.
A user in New Jersey with Comcast cable service received a letter from Comcast. He followed up, got an SDV tuning adapter, and he’s using it. Many of the details still aren’t clear, but what is clear is that the TiVo supports the adapter, and the cable company supports TiVos using the adapter.
The customer, jtmal0723, started a thread at TiVoCommunity with details. He’s also posted a picture of his Cisco SDV adapter.
We’re watching this closely, and we’re very happy to see that this hurdle has been overcome technically.
TiVo has added a large amount of information and new screenshots to their SDV page.
Thanks to TiVoBlog for the original post!
EDIT: Regarding this specific hardware, Cisco has a product information sheet here. And this is a picture of the back of the unit. The cable from the wall passes through, and the USB connection attaches to the TiVo.
2 replies on “SDV (Switched Digital Video) Debuting on TiVos in New Jersey”
[…] Briefly, the idea is that this enables the TiVo to tell the cable company which video stream to send down to your unit. So more options are available, since not every stream has to be sent at once. The unit plugs into your TiVo’s USB port and then you plug the cable line into it, and the output from it goes to the TiVo. See more info on our earlier blog post about SDV and TiVos. […]
[…] Now it seems that Oceanic is moving channels to SDV (Switched Digital Video) in order to save bandwidth but also to keep customers using their rented hardware. Worse it the CableCards are worthless for SDV channels. You’d need a forthcoming Tuning Adapter in order to get SDV stations. These new Tuning Adapters are only hitting the market now. […]