At our Southern California WeaKnees office, we use TimeWarner Business Class for our telephone service.
They seem to be having major problems. Our lines are down, and their tech support queue is (understandably) jammed. Our account rep at the Time Warner business office can’t even get through to his tech support.
So if you’re calling us and you get some crazy message that our number is “reserved” or something similarly cryptic, fear not, we’re here, but TimeWarner seems to be out to lunch.
Today, we’re debuting 2 TB single-drive internal kits for two very popular TiVo models: The TiVo HD and the original TiVo Series3.
With these kits, your TiVo will be able to record about 320 hours of HD, or just a ton of SD.
For several years we’ve had 2 terabyte solutions for the TiVo Series3 and the TiVo HD that consisted of an internal 1 TB drive and an external 1 TB drive. Now, we’ve got upgrades of a single 2 TB drive in the unit – no external needed.
This is the better scenario for several reasons including fewer cables, lower power requirements, simpler installation and setup, and, of course, a lower price.
The 2 TB single drive internal TiVo upgrade kits are now available for these two models:
In addition, we’ve been selling single 2 TB upgrades for these three models for a while now – and we’ve lowered the price of these kits as of today:
No, no, we don’t have the new DirecTV TiVo that both companies have been promising for more than two years now. But we do have the old one, the DirecTV HR10-250.
The DirecTV HR10-250 was, when it was initially released, the first HD TiVo, and pretty much the first HD DVR on any platform. It’s a great unit, and it works perfectly with OTA (over the air) antenna signals for pretty much the best quality HD broadcast streams available.
The big issue with the HR10-250 is that it can only decode MPEG2 channels from a DirecTV dish. So, while it will get almost all standard definition channels that DirecTV supplies, it won’t get any HD signals from DirecTV. They’ve migrated their HD channels to the MPEG4 format, and this unit just can’t read those.
But the DirecTV HR10-250 TiVo can receive, in HD, OTA signals, the signals that your local broadcaster sends out. Because the FCC gave local broadcasters so much bandwidth, these companies barely compress their signal at all (much less than DirecTV) and this results in the best quality HD broadcast available. We routinely compared recordings from OTA and DirecTV back when this unit could get DirecTV HD, and the OTA was always vastly superior.
So the HR10-250 can get HD from local broadcasters, and standard def local and premium channels from DirecTV. And, best of all, it’s a TiVo. That combination works for many people (myself included) and, until (or “if”) the new, promised unit ships, this is the best mix of interface and programming.
We now have a page dedicated to purchasing this unit from us, refurbished. See our DirecTV HD TiVo page for more info.
Here’s a disturbing tweet from @DIRECTV:
“Details are still being determined, launch maybe in late 2011. DIRECTV.com or TiVO.com for up-to-date info.”
See it on their Twitter page.
I’m certainly hoping this is just some uninformed rep over there, but this is their official feed. It’s the first time frame I’ve seen beyond the “early 2011” promises that are rapidly proving to be mistaken.
Amazon announced their Prime streaming option, which has been rumored about for a while. Basically, if you have a $79 Amazon Prime
Amazon Video On Demand
See the starred note here:
It says “Prime instant videos are not currently available on TiVo devices.”
Sad to hear it – we’re hoping that the word “currently” was placed there very carefully.