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bfollowell3
join:2009-12-11
Evansville, IN

bfollowell3

Member

Are new Whole Home DVRs coming to TWC anytime soon?

Has anyone heard anything about TWC going to a multi-source Whole Home DVR solution similar to WOWs UltraTV, rather than having to hookup multiple DVRs together? It just seems like this is the direction the industry is currently heading and I was curious if it looked like TWC would be heading down the same path soon of if they were going in another direction altogether.

- Byron
Mystic95Z
join:2005-05-10
Orlando, FL

Mystic95Z

Member

TWC has a whole home DVR listed on their site »www.timewarnercable.com/ ··· ent.html I cant speak to how well it works. Had the Insight one (Pace box) last year before going to DTV and hated it. I've never had a DVR that I liked as much as my old TIVO's.
bfollowell3
join:2009-12-11
Evansville, IN

bfollowell3

Member

Yeah, but that's not really like WOWs UltraTV with one unit that'll record up to six shows at once and then all you need is an extender box at the other locations. What you linked to was a "service" and you have to link multiple DVRs together. Record two shows at once. Nothing new really except for being able to see what is on the other DVR from another location. Not really top of the line stuff like what I'm hoping for.

- Byron
koebner
join:2006-07-18
Lexington, KY

koebner to bfollowell3

Member

to bfollowell3
I would think at some point TWC and other cable cos will need to upgrade their whole home hardware to match the satellite providers.

I have whole home+Genie+second HD-DVR thru DTV and it is great, way beyond anything cable has right now.
bfollowell3
join:2009-12-11
Evansville, IN

bfollowell3

Member

For what they charge for their "whole home" service, it might actually be cheaper for me to go back to Tivo, and I've never had anyone that matched Tivo for service and quality. That's just me of course.

I have a while before my house is done and I look into setting up service. Who knows what may change in the next 6 to 12 months.

Thanks for the info guys.

- Byron
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32 to bfollowell3

Premium Member

to bfollowell3
Last summer Time Warner announced a 6 tuner DVR w/ a 1TB hard drive whole house gateway. Not much news of it since, other then a blurb about it again at the beginning of this year. I posted this a while back, but it's worth mentioning again I guess, with ODN 6, the software support of boxes with more then 2 tuners was added. You can see that by accessing the diagnostic screens.

»www.fiercecable.com/stor ··· 13-01-31

If/when TW comes out with a whole home gateway this will probably be the, or at least one of the boxes they offer.

»www.cisco.com/en/US/prod ··· reen.pdf

My main concern with this, is will they allow dedicated DVRs in the home in a MOCA setting or will there will be a client box where the DVR gateway gets connected to your main TV and then other TVs in the house get a slave boxes that essentially steals a tuner and hard drive space from the main box. Like the Dish Hopper system, or DirecTVs HR34 with a C31 client. Personally I hate that solution, I want two complete fully functioning DVRs that while they can communicate with each other, are completely independent. I want each TV to have it's own box, with it's own hard drive and own tuners. Ideally, if I could have 1 TV hooked up with a Cisco 9845HDC and the other with a Cisco 8742HD and have them be able to share recordings, I'd be one happy guy.

I've been using whole house DVR from TW for about 2 1/2 years now. It does what it's supposed to. You're able to share recordings across multiple DVRs and MOCA compatible non DVR boxes. I would like to see a few enhancements made. First, I would like to be able to schedule recording and be able to tell the DVR what box I'd like to record it on. Second, I would like the ability to get a prompt when you have a scheduling conflict to be able to automatically set the third recording to record on another DVR, if there will be a tuner available during that time.

Elyria
join:2011-10-12
Elyria, OH

Elyria to bfollowell3

Member

to bfollowell3
said by bfollowell3:

I've never had anyone that matched Tivo for service and quality.

And you never will........ It's the best piece of hardware and contains the best software ever seen on consumer TV's
Mystic95Z
join:2005-05-10
Orlando, FL

Mystic95Z

Member

said by Elyria:

said by bfollowell3:

I've never had anyone that matched Tivo for service and quality.

And you never will........ It's the best piece of hardware and contains the best software ever seen on consumer TV's

I agree, I really wish I had opted for the Tivo DTV box instead of the Genie...
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32

Premium Member

Why? The THR-22 DirecTiVo is a joke compared to the HR34 and HR44s. It has half the hard drive space, two tuners instead of five, does not work in a whole house set up, there are issues using the smartphone and tablet apps in conjunction with it. I believe there are also some issues with using either PPV or On Demand or both, and one of the big concerns for me, it doesn't support 3D. Not to mention the TiVo interface is by far the worst thing I've ever used. I have the HR34, my neighbor got suckered into getting the new DirecTiVo, there is no comparison, between the two, you made the right choice by not going with the shitty TiVo. Seeing that cartoonish TiVo interface makes me want to vomit. My old DirecTiVos were junk, and the new ones are as well.

Elyria
join:2011-10-12
Elyria, OH

Elyria to Mystic95Z

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to Mystic95Z

said by Mystic95Z See Profile
I agree, I really wish I had opted for the Tivo DTV box instead of the

I'd see about possibly paying the difference to get one. Once you've transitioned to TIVO, you'll be pizzed that you waited so long. It by
far, has the best user interface in the industry. Saying good-bye to Navigator will be a joyous occasion. The features of the TIVO unit are miles ahead of the box's currently being supplied by TW.
dishrich
join:2006-05-12
Springfield, IL

dishrich to Happydude32

Member

to Happydude32
Steve - not to mention it ALSO adds another $5/month, on top of ALL the other (bloated) D* fees (regular DVR fee, etc.)
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32

Premium Member

I never realized that. I bet the money from that fee goes to TiVo. After all they need to pay their lawyers for all of their frivolous lawsuits somehow.

Once the THR-22 reaches EOL, I don't see replacement coming out. From what I understand the sales on these things are deplorable. It was real easy back in the early 2000s to sell millions of DirecTiVos when that was the only DVR DirecTV offered besides the dying Ultimate TV, but now that TiVo has some real competition within DirecTV, it's funny to see how far they've fallen.

djrobx
Premium Member
join:2000-05-31
Reno, NV

djrobx to Elyria

Premium Member

to Elyria

And you never will........ It's the best piece of hardware and contains the best software ever seen on consumer TV's

Meh. TiVo's overrated and overpriced in my opinion. They were definitely the pioneers of the DVR, and their "1.0" product was amazing for its time. But, they've been slow to innovate, and they don't seem to want to play nice with the providers (Crippled DirecTV boxes, and what ever happened to that Comcast TiVo?). A friend of mine had a TiVo Premiere and it was the most horrible, slow thing I've ever seen.

I agree, I really wish I had opted for the Tivo DTV box instead of the Genie...

And pay an extra fee just to lose the option to share recordings from room to room? No thanks. From what I understand the HR34 was a bit of a rush job to compete with the Hopper, and as a result it has some "horsepower" issues that the HR44 will fix. I'm happy with my 2 networked HR24s. They're responsive, and 4 tuners is enough for us.

My old DirecTiVos were junk, and the new ones are as well.

I disagree with you here. My old SD DirecTiVos were amazing for their time. The TiVo alternatives had not matured by the DirecTiVo era, and this was the best way to get a good DVR interface with direct integration to the provider. They were also budget friendly - one liftetime DVR fee covered all your TiVos, and the boxes got down to $99 a box.

I bailed on DirecTV+TiVo when the first HD DirecTiVo came out. They wanted WAY too much money, and the writing was on the wall for that box since it didn't support MPEG-4. That was the time I started renting a crap HD DVR from the cable company. It was definitely primitive, but my shows were still recording in glorious HD, and I didn't have to take out a second mortgage to get it.
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32

Premium Member

I only dealt with the Series 2 DirecTiVos, upwards of about 10 of them, and from the second day I had them to the last day I had them, every unit I had was affected by the Loss of Color bug that both DirecTV and TiVo denied existed. You could be channel surfing, watching Live TV or watching a recorded event or just be in the menus and all of a sudden the video would go from color to black and white at random. It was like if you were dealing with a bad SVHS cable. I swapped SVHS cables on both TV multiple times and even went down to composite video and it still was occurring. Sometime it would just flicker, sometimes it would remain that way for minutes at a time. The local DirecTV retailer that we got our system from offered two year warranties on all hardware and we took advantage of that hoping to get a couple boxes that were not affected by this. In the course of the 2 years with DirecTV, each one of the two TVs had the DVRs swapped out about five times each, if I remember right. And we had all different branded boxes some Hughes, some RCA, some Samsung and even the DirecTV branded R10 which was just a rebadged RCA TiVo. My last attempt at getting this corrected was I thought it might have been a problem with a shipment to my area, when I was taking a road trip, I bought a Philips DirecTiVo out of state at Worst Buy for $100 bucks and activated it when I got home. Same problem. ‘No body’ knew anything about this even though there was a thread about it on the TiVo Community Forum and multiple mentions of it. I had it blamed on everything from my cabling, which was completely reran twice to having it be ‘interference’ from my old Dish Network dish. Which was a crock.

And it wasn’t just that. The TiVo software was hideous. I couldn’t stand the overall look of the UI, the Grid Style Guide was deathly slow to populate not to mention it was idiotic to have it transparent on top of programming, there was no way to gauge how much space you had left on the hard drive and is it just me or was it completely retarded to have a button that Powered On the unit, but in order to turn it ‘off’, you had to do into TiVo Central and scroll down to the last option to put it in Stand By.

I too left DirecTV because of the outrageous price of the HD DirecTiVo. The week before Super Bowl Weekend of 2006 I purchased my first HDTV. DirecTV wanted $1,000 for the HD DTiVo that was already obsolete since it couldn’t support MPEG 4. Been with Time Warner ever since and dual subing it since last year when I got DirecTV back for Sports and 3D reasons.

Elyria
join:2011-10-12
Elyria, OH

Elyria to djrobx

Member

to djrobx

-- TiVo's overrated and overpriced in my opinion.

-- and they don't seem to want to play nice with the providers

-- A friend of mine had a TiVo Premiere and it was the most horrible, slow thing I've ever seen.

The price was never an issue. The features and benefits more than compensated for it's rather pricy.....price tag. Considering the quality piece of hardware it is, might be a tad undervalued.

I've done my own installs, both here with TW and with Comcast in Florida. Adapters and tuners were a snap once provisioned. I've yet
to have a tech from either company come to either home for tech work. Back and forth between 2 homes for 3 years now = not one issue.

Lovin' the Premiere. It's been the most rock solid device within our AV chain of hardware. Unquestionably has the best user display, that's super speedy, and we no longer ever have to wait for slow channel changes. The guide is years beyond what we see on our Cisco boxes.

There's no doubt.... there's a real hate/love line of division when it comes to the entire TIVO idea. Had I not experienced actually using one, I might be inclined to hate it too. The company continues to flourish and R&D is fast working towards to the next generation of
boxes.......I can hardly wait !!!

hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY

hobgoblin

Premium Member

"The company continues to flourish "

»thenextweb.com/insider/2 ··· eements/

It continues to flourish due to its patents and its aggressive enforcement of them, not its product.

Hob

Elyria
join:2011-10-12
Elyria, OH

Elyria

Member

I'm just glad the coffers have been filled to the rafters with liquid cash money. Those days of "redness" might just never be seen again. Product development is kicking butt and satisfaction polls have never been higher. The companies flourishing like never before. Some really cool stuff about to come outta hiding.

hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY

hobgoblin

Premium Member

From their First Quarter results:

»investor.tivo.com/phoeni ··· =1822298

For the first quarter, service and technology revenues were $61.8 million. This compared to guidance of $60 million to $62 million and $54.5 million for the same quarter last year. TiVo reported a net loss of $(10.3) million, compared to guidance of a net loss of $(16) million to $(19) million. This compared to a net loss of $(20.8) million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $0.8 million, exceeding guidance of $(5) million to $(8) million and compared to a loss of $(10.0) million in the same quarter last year. Both net income and Adjusted EBITDA included $10.9 million of litigation expense, which compared to $5.4 million in the year-ago quarter. In addition, TiVo repurchased $31 million of stock in the first quarter through open market purchases and from tax withholdings on employee restricted share vesting. Since the time our board authorized the $100 million repurchase plan, the combination of these two repurchase strategies has retired a total of almost $57 million worth of our equity.

Their Liquid cash appears to be reserved for repurchasing their stock. The company itself appears to be losing money year over year.

MeInDallas
join:2001-08-17
Dallas, TX

MeInDallas

Member

I knew they were losing money, which doesnt surprise me. Most people when I mention Tivo they cant believe they are still in business. I used to be such a fan in the early days, but Tivo has got to where they blame the cable company with any issues that arise, then months and years later there suddenly appears to be a fix/update for something that was supposed to be a cable company problem. Most people dont have time or the patience for that, they just wanna come home and watch TV and relax.
Satch
join:2009-11-25

Satch

Member

Hob,

Do you have any advanced info as to what six-tuner makes and company models will be available, when TWC releases these new DVR's?

Are they going to be Cisco's, Samsungs, or something else?

Satch

MeInDallas
join:2001-08-17
Dallas, TX

MeInDallas

Member

I "heard" it was going to be the Motorola DCX3600M, but this press release is from 2011, so things may have and probably have changed since then.

»mediacenter.motorola.com ··· 705.aspx

You can also Google DCX3600M and it shows up in a lot of articles saying the same thing. I would love to see some info on all this myself, but usually when I ask about it the forums go silent
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32

Premium Member

With Arris now owning Motorola Home, the future of the DCX Cable boxes and Surfboard modems will be interesting. Arris does have the 2 tuner+ Moxi, but that is it's own thing. Who knows if Arris will continue to operate both brands or merge the two and if Arris will put their own technology into Moto cable boxes or just slap their name on updated versions of the same hardware like Cisco did with Scientific Atlantic.
Satch
join:2009-11-25

Satch to MeInDallas

Member

to MeInDallas
said by MeInDallas:

I "heard" it was going to be the Motorola DCX3600M, but this press release is from 2011, so things may have and probably have changed since then.

»mediacenter.motorola.com ··· 705.aspx

You can also Google DCX3600M and it shows up in a lot of articles saying the same thing. I would love to see some info on all this myself, but usually when I ask about it the forums go silent

Interestingly,

Wisconsin, where I am from has never been a Motorola division. Our cable history was Pioneer, SA, Pace, Samsung, Cisco. In Wisconsin, unfortunately, all they are giving out unless you are in a Whole Home DVR program are SA-8300HDC. Customers in RARE cases might get newer boxes if you get lucky with a tech who has one on his truck and he is cool. However, you often really have to battle to get the newer boxes. A few years ago, there were Samsungs floating around our division, but our division I have read has had issues with them. The Cisco's I heard are better by comparison.

I have also heard that some divisions with the newer boxes are in short supply. I will bet that Syracuse New York will be the first with the new six-tuner boxes, as they are a major TWC test market. I think customers should have the right to the box of their choice. At least with Whole Home Programs, customers will get the newer set tops.

Satch

hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY

hobgoblin to Satch

Premium Member

to Satch
"Do you have any advanced info as to what six-tuner makes and company models will be available, when TWC releases these new DVR's?

Are they going to be Cisco's, Samsungs, or something else?"

I don't.

Hob