Category: TiVo News

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Product Information TiVo News

SDV (Switched Digital Video) Debuting on TiVos in New Jersey

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.

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DirecTV TiVo News

More Info on the DirecTV HD TiVo

DirecTV sent down a message to TiVo users this week about the announcement of a new DirecTV HD TiVo coming in 2009. The screenshots are posted here if you want to see them, but the interesting nuggets of info are:

  • DirecTV’s Broadband DIRECTV on DEMAND – which means the unit will have to support networking
  • Universal Swivel Search – so it might work with Amazon’s Unbox (now Amazon Video on Demand)
  • KidZone – Since this means it interacts with TiVo’s servers, it’ll likely work with some features from TiVo’s website, hopefully online scheduling.

At least this sets the stage for the possibility that TiVoToGo and all of those great networking features will be part of this new unit. Frankly, even if they aren’t, many people will want the unit just for the interface. But we’ve grown accustomed to the evolution of the cable TiVos, and we’re hoping this DirecTV unit will see those same enhancements.

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TiVo News

TiVo: Bring us a Mobile Website, Please!

Here’s a proposal for the folks at TiVo: build a lightweight website for us TiVo fans to use to schedule online programs.

The TiVo website has evolved into a truly great way to find and record programs, but a good portion of the time us TiVo users want to set something to record, we’re just not in front of a computer. We’re out and about. But we do have our smart phones.

OK, I know, TiVo and RIM partnered a few weeks ago to bring TiVo-something to Blackberry, and most likely, that will be online scheduling. And before that, TiVo inked a deal with Verizon to do the same for Verizon phones. But why be proprietary about this? Isn’t the key to make this work for TiVo users, no matter what other technology they have?

In a time when the iPhone is gaining a huge amount of market share, and Android phones will probably also steal a huge piece of the action from RIM and the rest of the crowd, doesn’t it make sense to just have a fast-loading, slimmed down website for online scheduling? I’m not advocating an iPhone app or an Android app (although those would be great, too), just a quick way to get logged in, choose that show you forgot to record, and be done.

TiVo recently redesigned their website, and it looks great and has excellent functionality – from a computer. But all of that functionality came by adding a lot of AJAX and, on a mobile device, that can be painful. Just logging in to the site is arduous. Typing an email address in TiVo’s login box is especially painful on an iPhone.

You don’t even need a special domain name for it, but it seems like your neighbor across the bay has already registered tivo.mobi, so maybe they’re working on this?

So how about it?

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TiVo News Troubleshooting Help

TiVo’s CableCARD Hotline

We really believe that CableCARDs are a great new technology in that they allow DVRs to work with a wide variety of cable providers. But, sometimes, getting them configured is a bit of a hassle.

Early on in their history, CableCARDs caused a whole host of problems, largely just due to the lack of knowledge of cable installers. But since then, the problems have really almost totally disappeared, and their installation and use has become routine and reliable.

But if you do have a problem, you should try calling TiVo’s CableCARD hotline. These folks have pretty deep knowledge of CableCARD issues.

Phone number: 866-986-8486

Hours of operation:
Monday – Sunday
6:00 AM – 9:00 PM Pacific

Categories
DirecTV TiVo News WeaKnees News

New HD TiVo for DirecTV

Well, we were at the point where we were pretty sure it would never happen. And, happily, we were wrong!

TiVo today issued a press release about a new HD TiVo for DirecTV that should be ready by the end of 2009. See the full information in TiVo’s press release.

We’ve had customers complain about DirecTV DVRs for years now, preferring the TiVo interface. And it looks like the day will come again when DirecTV and TiVo work together to make a DVR that has the best interface, and access to all of DirecTV’s programming.

DirecTV and TiVo ceased manufacture of the HR10-250 years ago now. That unit, still very popular among our customers (and still the main unit in my house) was the first mainstream HD DVR at all, and the only HD TiVo for several years, as well as the only DirecTV HD DVR for many years. Many TiVo fans even joined DirecTV just to get to use this hardware.

But as DirecTV decided to move to MPEG4 for new HD channels to conserve bandwidth, they needed to produce new equipment to deal with the MPEG4 signals. So they produced newer DVRs without TiVo – the HR20 and HR21. These units can read the older MPEG2 signals and the newer MPEG4 signals. The TiVo-based HR10-250 can only read the MPEG2 signals, and is therefore unable to get the new channels DirecTV releases in HD – and some even in SD.

During the DirecTV reign of Rupert Murdoch, we guessed that new hardware with TiVo would never be developed, because one of News Corp’s other companies was NDS, an engineer of DVRs in Europe and Israel. NDS engineered DVRs for DirecTV.

But now that Murdoch’s News Corp. isn’t in control any more, it seems that TiVo was able to start work with DirecTV all over again.

For years now, we’ve been helping customers navigate the split between TiVo and DirecTV. It looks like, at last, those days may be coming to an end, and customers who love both DirecTV and TiVo won’t have to decide between them any longer. It may be a long year of waiting . . .