These are rough times for a TiVo fanatic. The company and its groundbreaking box are getting squeezed into irrelevance. On the one side, cable companies offer their own DVR boxes, which may not be elegant but are easy and cheap. On the other side, you have PC-based solutions like Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, which do more than a TiVo and are improving by leaps and bounds every year.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for the past month, after I received a weekly Circuits e-mail on the topic from David Pogue, a sharp and funny writer for the New York Times. (It took me 20 minutes to navigate through the Times’ horrible search facilities, but I finally found David’s column online. You can read the whole thing here until the Times decides to put it behind their paid-subscribers-only firewall.)
Anyway, David’s thesis was that TiVo (the company) isn’t doomed, because TiVo (the gadget) is so refined and elegant and ingenious that nothing should be allowed to compete with it. And to prove it, he provides a laundry list of features that make the TiVo so hip it hurts. The list comes with a qualifier, of course: “I do realize that many rival boxes have some of these features. But none that I know of offers all of these them — and especially not in such an easy-to-use, brilliantly designed software package.”
Well, it’s a very good list. And since I am in the enviable position of owning a Series 1 TiVo, two PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and a high-definition Explorer 8300HD digital video recorder from Scientific Atlanta, I thought it might be instructive to compare all three.
One caveat first: My Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR runs the miserable SARA software instead of the slightly less miserable (or so I’ve been told) Passport software. So if you have a Scientific Atlanta box, your experience may be slightly better than mine. So now, without any further ado, let the comparison begin! My commentary is in italics following David’s original words. (Update: Note that the text at the top of each bulleted point is from David Pogue’s list. Although I noted earlier that I own a Series 1 TiVo, I think it’s safe to presume that David’s write-up was based on a Series 2.)
- Retroactive recording. You come home, flip on the TV, and discover that you’re 35 minutes into what looks like a great show. If you have TiVo, you can either rewind into the past (to view what you missed while the TV was off) or even record it, thanks to the TiVo buffer that always stores the most recent 45 minutes of the current channel.
To the best of my knowledge, TiVo’s buffer is 30 minutes, not 45. MCE keeps a similar buffer but doesn’t allow you to save it. That’s one of the few flaws in MCE. The SARA software keeps a buffer and lets you record it. - Wish list. On a TiVo, you can type something — an actor, movie title, anything — that you’re interested in, even if it’s not anywhere in the TV guide. If and when it’s ever broadcast, on any channel at any time, the TiVo will record it for you.
You can do this with MCE as well. In fact, the MCE interface is a bit easier to use, in my opinion. SARA does nothing at all like this. - Built-in reaction time. When you’re fast-forwarding through a show (or, more often, through commercial blocks), you’re watching the video flickering by. And then you see the part you want to watch — and hit Play. Now, on a less intelligent machine, you’d be too late. You’d have missed the first 20 seconds of what you wanted, because the fast-forwarding had already blown past it.
But not on a TiVo. It compensates for your reaction time. When you hit Play, it doesn’t begin playing from that point; it begins playing a few seconds before that, with uncanny “it knew what I wanted” accuracy.
MCE has this option as well. It’s called Reaction Time Compensation, and it’s customizable using theTweakMCE PowerToy. [Update: As Matt Goyer points out in the comments, this tweak didn’t work properly. It was in the first iteration of TweakMCE included with the Winter Fun Pack but was removed from the standalone version now available for download.] SARA doesn’t do this, and the absence of this feature makes the experience of watching a recorded program annoying. - 30-second skip. It’s not a documented trick, but it’s nonetheless a juicy and delicious one. Press the following buttons on the remote while a show is playing back: Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select. Now your Advance button is a 30-second skip button. Press the same sequence again to turn off this feature. (You have to re-do this after a power failure.) It’s a much quicker, more precise way to skip ads.
This is an undocumented trick on TiVo, but on MCE it’s a well-documented feature. In fact, the MCE remote control even has a Skip button dedicated to this function, as well as a Replay button that jumps back in 7–second increments. SARA has a “jump back” button, but you have to push it after you fast-forward too far. - Season pass. On many DVR’s, you can ask to have a certain show recorded every week automatically — “Desperate Housewives” or whatever. But on a TiVo, you get some important options with that. For example, you can tell the TiVo to record only first-run episodes and not repeats. And you can give it a maximum number to store, so you don’t return from a two-week trip to find 579 new and syndicated reruns of “E.R.” clogging your hard drive.
MCE offers this exact functionality and then some, including a “once per day” option that TiVo doesn’t have. (Click the image shown here to see the full screen.) SARA offers only “Record one” or “Record all” options, and the record settings are specifically tied to a given time slot. If your show gets moved in the lineup, it may not be recorded. - TiVoToGo. A software upgrade, which is arriving silently over the phone lines this month and next, lets you copy shows onto a Windows laptop from across your home network for watching on the plane, train or automobile.
It looks like TiVo has a lot of work to do on this feature. I can’t say, because my Series 1 box doesn’t support it. By contrast, I can freely copy any recorded program from my MCE machine to any other machine and watch it using Windows Media Player. SARA doesn’t allow any access to recorded programs. - Folder groupings. Your list of recorded shows can be sorted by name, recording date or expiration date — and can arrange themselves into “folders” of shows (for example, all your “West Wing” episodes) to save list clutter.
Ditto for MCE. I can also tag recorded files with star ratings and sort them in Windows Media Player on any attribute, including station name and channel. SARA gives me only a crude alphabetical list of my recordings. - Smart offers. If you bail out of watching a recorded show within a few minutes of the end, TiVo asks if you want to delete the recording to free up hard drive space. That’s smart; it’s assuming that since you’re near the end, you’ve probably watched all you intend to watch. (If you cancel playback in the middle or beginning, though, TiVo doesn’t bother you with that offer; it assumes you’re not finished with the show yet.)
With MCE, every time I stop a program, I get a short menu of options that allow me to choose whether I want to Resume, Restart, Delete, or Keep it. If I choose Keep, I get a second menu with more sensible options. I can bypass any of these choices by going straight to the main menu. Personally, I prefer this option over TiVo’s supposedly more intelligent behavior. I often record a program, watch a minute or so, and realize I have seen it before or it’s on a subject that I’m not interested in, and I want to just delete it. SARA makes me go through a similar menu whenever I stop watching a program, but the choices aren’t particularly well thought out. - Retroactive TV guide. The Guide button on the remote brings up a scrolling TV guide. What’s really cool is that, for a given channel, you can scroll both forward into the future (to see what will be in HBO in, say, two weeks) and into the past (to see what was on earlier this day or week). Both are very handy in certain circumstances.
MCE’s guide doesn’t look into the past, but it works just fine when looking at the future. MCE also offers a very cool Web-based guide and a Remote Recording service that lets you schedule a recording on your MCE from any computer. [Update: A Series 2 TiVo with a TiVo Central Online account can do the same.] SARA has a guide that goes only 6 days into the future, which is not nearly long enough. - Recording log. TiVo can show you what you’ve recorded — and, when something you requested did not get recorded (it happens), it can show you exactly why. It will tell you that your hard drive was full, for example, or that somebody in your house scheduled a conflicting show and gave it higher priority.
Yep, MCE does this too. In fact, every such event is also captured in the Windows Event Log, so you can dump it to a text file or a spreadsheet for further analysis. SARA does no such thing.
Bottom line? Feature for feature, Windows XP Media Center Edition matches TiVo and even exceeds it in some measures. I could put together a list of MCE-only features that I especially like. For instance, the Movies button lets me scroll through all movies available in the current guide, sorted by rating. Once a week I go through and pick out a selection of great films from Turner Movie Classics, American Movie Classics, HBO, Starz, and Sundance Channel, which means I always have a selection of interesting movies to watch. I can copy any recording to DVD in WMD format or use a third-party program to make a disk that will play in any DVD player. And I can use my Media Center Extender to play anything from the Media Center PC (which is in the den) on the TV in the bedroom.
And now let’s talk about the two elephants in the room that David’s column don’t mention at all:
- HDTV. TiVo doesn’t do it at all, unless you pay $1,000 for a DirecTV with TiVo and then sign up for a service that in my case costs $30 per month more than my cable bill. MCE does HDTV, but not particularly well. It doesn’t accept input from my cable box, only from an over-the-air antenna. Rumor has it that will change later this year, but for now it’s the big advantage for my cable company, and the only reason I’m willing to put up with the horrible SARA software.
- Multiple tuners. Again, TiVo gives you one tuner per box, unless you’re willing to pony up for the pricey DirecTiVo solution. By contrast, my MCE box supports multiple tuners, and I currently have a Hauppauge dual-tuner card that does a superb job. The 8300HD has dual tuners as well, which means that I get to watch both Lost and The West Wing each week in HDTV.
I bought my first TiVo in 2000, when the company was only a year old. I was a charter member of the Cult of TiVo. But these days, I don’t miss it. The Media Center interface is every bit as usable, with some clear technical advantages as well. If the 2006 upgrade delivers on the promise of HDTV through a cable card, I’ll finally be back to one box that does it all.
Ed Bott 
A really, really nice write up. Great comparison piece. I agree with almost all of it. Although I’ve not tested a HDTV cable DVR offering yet the stories that I’ve heard (with the exception of the Foundation boxes being tested in Washington state) have all been really negative. Last night at the geek dinner people swapped similarly terrible stories about the horrible user interface on the cable boxes. Seems like you everyone is suffering through it only for the HDTV DVR.
The HDTV DirecTV TiVo is fantastic. I own it. Great user interface, all the great TiVo features, 4 tuners (2 HD, 2 regular) and is the best television resource at the moment. Bad news? You can’t get content off the box like the cable offerings and it’s expensive.
My set up included a Series 1 TiVo, the DirecTV HDTV TiVo, and my Media Center PC.
Nice work Ed.
Argh.. there is this little thing called money… and the fact that people hate computers.. there is no way people will shell out the dough required. They would get the TiVo for $49 after rebate and pay $12.95 per month. Or better, pay just $4.99 for the cable DVR.
Plus, if you are running fullblown Windows in your living room, you need to worry about virus infections, thus raising your TOC.
TiVo (and MCE)’s demise will be due to cable and satellite boxes incorporating DVR functionality.
Thomas Hawk, you are an MCE b|tch so your opinion doesn’t really matter.
I love my MCE box, but it is after all a PC. It does crash with distressing regularity, it does need to be virus scanned, patched and otherwise coddled like any other other Microsoft operating system.
But is is good enough. It time shifts HDTV fabulously well if you don’t mind over-the-air HDTV programming (and I don’t.)
The TiVo can do movies just like you described MCE (Disclaimer: I have never used MCE). You can put a “Movies” filter on the guide, or do a search in the schedule programs to record section for movies, and see all the upcoming movies for 2 weeks. I use it all the time.
As for Dual tuners, you ignored the standard defintion DirecTV TiVo. $80 upfront + $5 a month. The MCE and cable DVRs can’t compete with this pricing. Of course the downside is no HD (Unless you from $1000) and you have to be able to get DirecTV.
Hey, guess what. I hate to sound like I’m advocating obsolescence, but Series 1 Tivo is outdated. Anyone buying a Tivo now is getting a Series 2. So, as a consumer guide, this is a bit dusty and invalid.
Tivo also has an 8-second replay feature, in fact it’s a decently well advertised one.
Presumably both Tivo’s and MCE’s remote copy system is only Windows compatible. At least Tivo’s could more easily be cross compatible, since Tivo runs Linux.
Tivo also has remote recording, which you can do from any computer on the Internet, via the Tivo website.
Tivo has been specifically engineered towards its task, not simply dropped on top of a PC running Windows. (Granted, it’s dropped on top of a PC running Linux, but it’s a custom engineered unit, with lots of custom code on top of Linux to do its work.)
I don’t know a lot about MCE, admittedly. One nice feature is that the Tivo can direct connect to a DCT2000 cable box (Comcast digital standard issue), avoiding need for a lossy “IR blaster”. (Does MCE? I don’t know.)
The “pricey DirecTiVo” option? The dual tuner DTivos (non-HD models) are usually free for new DTv subscribers and anywhere from $49 to $99 for everyone else. That is certainly a lot cheaper than any Media Center PC.
And as for monthly service charges, I don’t know what kind of deal your cable company provides, but for the vast majority of folks DTv is usually $10-15 less per month for similar programming packages.
About the only potential downsides to DTv are if your area’s local networks aren’t available or if you don’t have a view of the Southern sky.
Other than that, the DTivo is far and away the best option.
DigiGuide and MyTVInfo both provide EPGs that offer way more recording options than those described above. Sure they don’t record but there are so many actual recording solutions out there that the possibilities are (almost) endless.
Great write up. I just got the HD DirecTV TiVo and it is well worth the (very high) cost.
Whether recorded from OTA or DirecTV the quality is so good it makes me sad all the time I watched my Series 1 TiVo or ReplayTV with their super grainy picture.
My SD DirecTV TiVo was a godsend when I got it but the HD is really unbelievable.
Highly recomended and totally user friendly.
Brendan
Great comparison Ed — thanks for taking the time — I really feel educated after reading this post. Hopefully folks will see the Media Center PC as much more than a DVR — we’ve got Music, Pictures, Videos, Radio (Internet and FM) plus third parties bringing great content to consumers via Online Spotlight in addition to the DVR features.
Keep the great feedback coming!
Nice to know there are some great options out there that I can’t use. Rogers, my local cable monopoly (I’m Canadian) only supports the Scientific Atlanta boxes for their digital cable offerings. It’s SARA or nothing up here, and it really is horrible.
As far as I can tell, the ONLY reason people use the Explorer 8000 and Explorer 8300HD are because they’re FORCED TO by their cable companies. Ok, so nobody is holding a gun to my head, but I don’t have any other options if I want digital cable and PVR functionality.
chrish
Has everyone has forgotten the phoenix of the DVR world -ReplayTV.
Brought out of bankruptcy it has the best of both worlds.
Not only does it have all TiVo’s features but:
Want to skip 30sec? press the jump button.
Want to skip commercials? Press the right arrow key.
Want to edit & burn TV, plug it into your network & download to your computer.
Ed,
The Passport software on the 8300HDs is quite a bit better and has built-in-reaction-time, decent season pass options (record first run or all episodes, on this channel only or not, in this time slot only or not, priority, how many episodes to keep, etc. etc.), supposedly with an SATA hard drive you can move stuff off of it or will be able to soon (though I haven’t investigated this too much yet, and it’s not nearly as simple as TivoToGo), it also has the ability to look far into the future after loading, not sure if it goes beyond six days or not.
Too bad you have the SARA software :-(.
J
Hey, big Tivo feature missing from this list (and I could swear it was in the original article?) – SUGGESTIONS. I pay a lot of money for cable, and I want to get as much use out of it as possible. With Tivo you rate a few shows and it figures out other programs you might like and records them, all without your intervention. It’s the only way to get your money’s worth out of overpriced cable systems, and no other DVR seems to have it.
I look forward to when Microsoft offers a specialized box (like an XBOX). I would love to have a specialized DVR style box that hooks up to the TV and offer Wireless Connection, DVD burner, dual (or more) tuners, and upgradeable hard drives.
I prefer to get my internet connection via my DSL. ALthought a box could have both options: highspeed (wire and wireless) and dial up.
This a developing market, HTPC prices, HDTV prices, software maturation and use model changes will be significant over the next few months and years. Companies need to be prepared to invest accordingly — Microsoft is in a good position to do this.
Investment isn’t the only thing. Just to reiterate Charlie Owen’s comments, what makes Windows Media Center perhaps the strongest contender in this category, is not just what it can do as a DVR, but what else it can do now and in the future. By releasing the SDK for WMC, Microsoft has opened the door to convergence of related technologies, like home automation.
I have two Series2 Tivo’s in my house and I am very pleased that my box can move around 3 video streams without sweating.
1. Recording from Cable TV
2. Recording over the network from our other box.
3. Watch whatever recorded shows we want.
I’m very happy and would need a really compelling reason to change. As the “System Administrator” on my home network I really appreciate a “computer” that doesn’t require maintainance or rebooting and isn’t affected by Virus’s, Worms, or anything else. Tivo really is the quality level and usability equal to or better than a Macintosh, It just works.
Good article; it answered some of my questions that Id been thinking about. I’m a long-time TiVo owner, with multiple TiVos, but have been looking into other possibilities. One piece of information that wasnt mention, but that others have commented on, is cost. My TiVo was $49 with the rebate along with a monthly service fee. Ive priced out an MCE box, and zowie! To get something that would be equivalent (or maybe a little better, cause if Im building it Im not going to skimp), were looking at $2,000+! Thats not just a little extra! Granted I can do more with an MCE box, but if its strictly computer-related, Im going to use my workstation. So until someone is selling a sub-$400 MCE box (TiVo equivalent: $100 hardware + $300 lifetime subscription), Im sticking with TiVo.
I’ll take my S.A. HD8000 for $8/month, compared to $1000 for Tivo HD. I have the Passport software, it’s not too bad. I already dropped $2-3000 on the TV and stereo, I don’t have another $1000 to drop.
It would have been nice to see MythTV included in this mix. It is the most powerful PVR I’ve ever seen, completely customizable, and free. Works on both Linux and MacOS X. And it does HDTV.
With all those PVR toys you owe it to yourself to check out MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org). I went through your list of features for Tivo and MCE and went “yup got it” to almost all of them and then I started looking at the things Myth does that the others don’t.
MYTHTV!
You really can’t compare a 1999 Tivo against a 2005 Media Center PC.
At a minimum you should have used a Series 2.
Even better is the HD TiVo, which is cheaper than your 2005 Media Center PC.
-MB
The thing I like about my TIVO’s is the ease with I’ve modified them, and I’ve done so extensivly. I have two type 1 DTIVO’s and one type 1 standard TVIO. I’ll be investing in an HD DTIVO once I confirm that I can modify it as extensivly as I have my type 1 TIVOs.
All of them are now extended to several hundred hours of recording time, all of them have 100mb ethernet and a web interface. I can pull off video from all of them and use it on any of my PC’s or burn them to DVD, or share it to any other TIVO (in my house or if a friend has a modified TIVO to them).
All of them have Caller ID on the screen and other features I like. We also can read email from our TIVOs when we are not watching a show. Overall for the price you will have a hard time getting me to give up my TIVO’s. Another feature I really prefer is that the TIVO never crashes, that is for sure not something you can say about the MS Windows product.
As to the “pricey DTIVO” comment, well pricewise I paid less then $50 for each of the DTIVO units and $99 for my standalone TIVO. I’ve invested less then $200 per unit to upgrade them to include features that no off the shelf machine offers.
I wish I had a Series 2 TiVo, but I don’t. My parents and my father-in-law do, though. Anyway, remember that the original TiVo features in the comparison are from David Pogue’s article, and he most assuredly is using a Series 2.
I’ve got MythTV on my list of things to try. I’ve got lots of hands-on experience with BeyondTV as well, which has some nice features but requires a lot of hands-on integration.
As to cost, I believe my homebrew Shuttle SFF MCE box cost about the same as an HD TiVo and has the extra benefit of handling digital music and photos, which was essential for me. You can see the list of components here.
I hate to sound like a honk for the cable company, but I have Time Warner with the built in DVR. I sold my TiVo once I got it. Has 2 tuners, easy interface, and works great. Also has HD.
When I had TiVo, I hated the fact that it would change the channel I was watching to record something.
So, Honk Honk.
M
great write up. one correction, though: the reaction time compensation calibration does not work in MCE. in fact, it was removed from the stand-alone release of Tweak MCE. it’s really too bad because there’s nearly no compensation as is in MCE. my reflexes suck which makes fast forwarding nearly unusable — i only use skip to move past commercials and the like.
I have used all expect the HD Tivo. In the end I own a replaytv and an lg 3410a. I could not live with having to pay for digital cable to be able to get the HD recorder. If the 3410a had multiple tuners it would rival the HD Tivo. It has a free guide and both ATCS/QAM tuners. I bought the replaytv to keep only HD on the 3410A.
My Time Warner Cable DVR has most of the features listed above, and my SageTV box (home built) has the others… All in all, I am very happy with the Time Warner Cable box, and gaining appreciation for SageTV.
Canadians who want to own a Tivo: check out http://www.tivocanada.com/ (outdated instructions) and http://forums.tivocanada.com/ (need to prove Candian residence, and then you will be shown the easy way to get a Tivo running north of the border). I have a Series 1 Tivo that works great here in Toronto. I would suscribe to the Tivo service if they offered it here.
BTW, the 30/45 min live TV cache is probably related to disc space. I upgraded mine from 30GB to 80GB and its cache is over an hour, except when I need to delete some shows.
Re “smart offers” — with TiVo you quickly learn that if you want to give up on a show no matter where you are in it, you hit TWO buttons in succession: you hit the “jump to end” button immediately followed by the “list” button. That ensures you always get the “delete this show?” offer, because you were at the end of the show when you hit List. Four clicks to get to the list with the show deleted (End; List; Up; Select).
Re being able to scroll all movies by title? Go to Pick Programs to Record, to “Pick by Title”, and you are offered a loooong list of types of shows. Don’t just click “All programs” — scroll down to movies, or sports, or music, or whatever category, then go right. The next screen is the alphabet matrix, just hit Select to put up an “A” and go right over to the list. You are now in an alphabetical scrolling list of all titles of Movies or whatever other category of show you selected. All sports shows? All Music? etc.
You can qualify the “wish list” entries the same way: look for “stooge” only in movies, or only in documentaries, etc.
what about the impact of a mod’ed xbox running XBMC? combine that with bittorrent to snag tv shows, it just like having a DVR. now granted, you dont get the immediate tv viewing satisfaction like with tivo since you usually have to wait half a day to download the shows as they come out, but so what. i can wait. plus the added bonus of then archiving entire seasons of shows to dvd-r.
now i used to have a UTV back in the day, so the only real feature i miss is one button recording and pausing and 8 second rewind of live tv. but to be honest i really dont watch that much live tv anymore. i just download the shows i know i want.
i’ve been wanting to get a second mod’ed xbox so i can run mythTV on it, but i just havent gotten around to it yet.
At one time or another, I’ve had a standalone S1 Tivo, MS UltimateTV, and two S2 DirecTivos. I’m currently using Comcast’s Motorola DCT6412 HD DVR, and must say that save for a couple annoying (but not critical) bugs, it does most everything pretty well, especially for the $10/mo price.
Just one comment about this:
“for the pricey DirecTiVo solution”
Right now, it’s $49 if you’re a new DirecTV subscriber, and $99 if you’re an existing subscriber, even if you already have a DirecTiVo — and your fee for the first covers your additional units. So “pricey” might not be the best word to use. 😉
Am I the only one who doesn’t like the “smart reaction” thing?? Maybe my reaction time is faster than most, but I have no problem hitting play at the right time. I hate the fact that it backs up to “help me.” When I first got my DVR (from COX), this confused me until I figured out I could hit Pause, then Play, and it wouldn’t compensate.
Re “pricey”… It’s fair enough to note that the SD DirecTiVos are not that expensive, but I personally wouldn’t switch to DirecTV without the HD option, which I think everyone can agree is not just pricey but expensive.
That was one crappy article indeed.
The DirectTVTiVO is not pricey, even with DualTuners.
My DualTuner device was $99 for 70 Hours, and all it required was that I run another line from my Sattelite.
Very poorly done article in general. Tivo is doomed.
Why no mention of ReplayTV (superior to Tivo)?
I don’t own a Replay TV, so I can’t comment on it.
I have 3 Series 1 Tivo units. One 14 hour (when they first came out) and 2 60 hour units. I was a real believer in the Tivo. I use cable because in the midwest storms knock out the satellite from time to time so no DirecTivo for me. Our local company has HDTV but no DVR and all the software I have seen on the DVRs has not really been that impressive. I started looking for an alternative and found MCE. I put in on a high end processor with a Firewire drive for recorded storage and was very impressed. Features that I can’t get with Tivo are content like Napster for music and Internet movies. With MCE, I can burn a DVD or CD of my recordings and take them with me. I can watch Divx and Xvid recordings on it. I can browse the web on my big screen TV. MCE is expandable. I know I will get Cable HDTV later this year for it. I know I can keep adding features and content that I want and ignore the stuff that I don’t use. Tivo suggestions for the most part are not really that great for me and I have ended up turning them off. Another cool feature of MCE is that you can take an Xbox and run the MCE extender on it to do most of what MCE does (although it lacks divx and xvid codecs), but you can watch recorded or live TV and listen to music. MCE gives me an all-in-one-box solution by having a PC/DVD/CD Player/Tivo/MP3 Player/FM Receiver and much more. Yes it is pricey, but so were my 60 hour Tivos (at $700 a pop). Yes it is a PC, but if built correctly with well known compoenents, it can be pretty stable. I have to reboot my cable boxes every couple of weeks anyway. The big point with MCE is that it can change and grow and with Microsoft behind it, content providers will line up to support it.
I’ve got a DVR running Passport and it is a huge improvement over SARA. True, it doesn’t have the same robust functionality as a TiVo, but $7 a month and a free DVR box is more cost effective than a TiVo box and $12+ a month for service. The only cheaper option I’ve seen is the DirectTV/TiVo combo, but then you are stuck with a satellite dish, which IMO is total crap. It rains too much where I live to make satellite worthwhile…
MCE is good in theory, but I’m not ready to sacrifice my main box as a glorfied DVR, and I can’t justify spending another $300 to upgrade one of my auxillary machines with a better video card, HD, motherboard, and processor so it will be able to record video seemlessly. IMO, it’s a non-competitor in the market at this point. Until MS develops a standalone DVR box ala-XBOX, they will not seriously contend for market share. As it stands I’d rather save my $150 (or however much they are charging for the OS right now) and contain any attempts at PC based digital recording to tinkering around with a Linux based Freevo box .
One thing that people never seem to mention when talking about DVRs is that TiVo is a dedicated appliance and in my case, one that sits on top of my surround sound receiver by my TV. My computer, on the other hand, is far away from my TV, and I would never trust it to always be available to record my shows. For instance, I love to play games, and I don’t want my computer recording video while I’m playing WoW or Half Life 2. I’m also not about to shell out money to make my own dedicated dvr computer. If anyone is remotely serious about recording their shows, why wouldnt they want a dedicated device?
Now if someone made a dedicated MCE box that was small and cheap that sat next to my TV and worked with my main computer – thats something I’d consider.
As others have pointed out you skipped the upgradability of the TIVO. If you’re willing to learn and invest time you can pull video from the TIVO (yes HD too Thomas!) and it will NOT be DRM encumbered either. You can upgrade the size of the HDs pretty easily (yes HD too) as well. Features to allow remote scheduling over the WEB are available and if you’ve got multiple boxes you can stream between them. I can also play MP3 and display pics – no I didn’t purchase HMO either. I’m NOT a Linux genious either, mortals can do this. Point your browsers to http://www.dealdatabase.org and explore their forums but READ before posting if you’re a newb. Forget the “standard” TIVO forums, extraction conversation gets you banned. (rolleyes)
When I can get a MythTV or MCE box with dual or more HD tuners pulling from OTA, SAT, or cable – including premiums – and NOT adding DRM garbage I’ll be tempted. As it stands now only TIVO does anything close to this and the DTV price is not all that bad – my hardware was $100 plus a $150 drive and some time. I’ll pay a little extra for guide data etc. and could care less. The hardware to do what I want for a HTPC just doesn’t seem to be here yet and with the RIAA and other industry chumps screwing around it could be awhile coming too. I’ll be shocked if Microsoft drops their DRM garbage anytime soon – I’m rooting on MythTV.
I was wondering why there is nothing about Snap Stream’s software.
Basically, it is MythTV for XP without MCE. I have been using it for two years and love it.
Recent upgrades allow multiple tuner cards to be used to allow simultaneous watching one channel and recording as many other channels as you have tuners.
No subscriptions to the on-line TV guide, and has most of TiVo’s scheduled recording features.
Especially useful if you don’t want to buy a MCE box and the DRM issues, with MCE.
SnapStream when used with Hauppauge’s PVR 150 hardware MPEG encoding is a great value for TiVo like features in a PC.
Good stuff guys, but you’ve missed the Echostar DVR921 and soon to be sold DVR942. DVR921 has its issues, like it needs to be rebooted every other day but it has three tuners, 2-Satellite and one OTA DTV (HD and SD). It receives and records HD and SD programming and will record one program while you’re watching another. The Echostar EPG is as good as the TiVo schedule, and will go it the future many weeks but not the past. I had ReplayTV and TiVo sr2 which re-encodes the A/V program, so the main advantage of the DVR921 is that the recorded A/V is the compressed stream from Echostar, there’s no further picture or audio degradation no matter how many times you tell the box re-record a program or portion of a program. When youre watching SD on a high rez large screen HD monitor the quality of picture matters a lot. The DVR921 also has the 30 sec jump forward, and if the main tuner (the one feeding the decoder output) is on a channel you can FRev-stop-cue-Rec so that you dont miss any of the program, including a 2 hour movie. PIP allows you to switch back and forth between two programs and record one or both. What the DVR921 needs is networking so that still pictures or PC Hard Disc recorded shows can be moved to the DVR921 250GB HD for viewing and from the DVR921 to the PC HD or DVD burner. Overall the DVR921 is a better product than what anyone else has sold in the CE market so check it out.
So, in reality, the article SHOULD say:
Tivo- Best price for functionality, ease of use, and stability.
MCE- Superior functionality, higher price, extra hassle of running a modified version of windows.
ReplayTV- A few people know how good the box is, but most don’t want to get stuck holding a PVR from a company who went bankrupt.
Software bundles other than MythTV- varied functionality, same issues as MCE without a massive company behind the effort (this could actually be a plus or minus).
MythTV- It’s a project in itself to install and configure, but has far superior functionality than all of the above.
I have DirectTV with Comcast and their DVR with HDTV
Pretty much all the features are available that were mentioned. Only annoying thing is if I’m in the middle of a 35min show I can’t record from the beginning anymore. Only from that point.
Also, when I switch off the cable box, all buffers are erased.
For this reason I prefer to watch on my desktop at times ( connected to Apple 20″ display ) because it saves the old buffers. So when I switch on Wed night, I can instantly rewind to what I saw last on Tue night. This is superb.
BTW, the tuner is ATI AIW Radeon 8500 DV. Superb graphics card. Old but good.
Re Upgradability of TiVo: I upgraded my original Series 1 box a couple years ago with a 160GB drive. I’m impressed with the mods you can do, but that takes you seriously into geek/hack mode, which disqualifies about 98% of the population. I am impressed with the community that has grown up around TiVo and am pleased to see the MCE community ramping up quickly too.
Re Snapstream: I own a copy of it and the Firefly remote. I had a lot of trouble getting it to run reliably, whereas MCE2005 on the same hardware ran just fine out of the box. Also, the music and photo features plus support for Media Center Extenders made MCE a better choice for me.
The Echostar sounds interesting, but the “reboot every other day” requirement is a deal-breaker.
+1 for MythTV. I love mine, I put together a Shuttle XPC box about 2 years ago for $450. 128GB HD, usb Wi-Fi + remote.
eBay will be available on MCE earlier 😉
http://www.mcesoft.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=92&Itemid=2
Christoph
I’ve tested a lot of DVR software. I currently use SageTV as my primary DVR. I break it down like this…
If you are a satellite user DirectTivo is your only good option, getting the direct digital quality is really the way to go. Any other solution will have to decompress the MPEG2 and recompress it.
If you use Cable or OTA you have a choice…either
You don’t want to fuss with your DVR, you want extremely high levels of reliability and you aren’t particularly technical.
TIVO
You are a bit technical and willing to trade ease of use for features. MCE or SageTV
I LOVE my SageTV, but it took a lot of effort to get right and its rare but still occasionally something will go wrong.
Unique features…watch TV on any networked PC in your house. See something cool? Double click on the file and clip out a clip and send it to your friends. Want to keep something forever? Drag it on a DVDR. Need to send mom that episode she missed? Author it on DVDR. Want 4 tuners in one box? No problem…
Ok…I have to ask how people have their PC’s built if they’re crashing all the time? Since 2000/XP came out, I think I’ve crashed 3 times. 3 times in YEARS. And I push it pretty hard sometimes. If you’re using 98/ME, it’s time to move on…seriously.
Furthermore, if one has a decent box…upgrading to MCE shouldn’t be too expensive. A decent tv card is about $100, opsys is $200-300 (?). Not like the $2000 quoted above unless you want to waste money on a whole ‘nother box.
As a TiVo early adopter I can honestly say I’ve tried almost every solution out there to get out of the monthly fees. Don;t get me wrong, I love my TiVo I just hate the fees. I got mine about 2 months after they became available (what, 6 years ago) and had I known the future I would have popped for the lifetime subscription which was, I think, something like $100 when I first got mine. To be honest I wasn’t sure the company would be around and the monthly fee was less than it is now. By the time I knew they would make it my box was old enouh and the fees had gone up that I thought monthly would be my safest bet. Wrong both times. My ultimate solution was to go to DirecTV. With that I can have all the TiVos I want for one fee ($4.99) and they are all dual tuner boxes!
To address one thing mentioned in the article: So, the 45 minute buffer thing on the Tivo is a little odd. First of all, on the Series 1 you only have the 30 minute scrollback. On the Series 2 there is still a 30 minute scrollback window, but more than 30 minutes is actually buffered. For example, say you come home at 5:40 (I wish) and find that the TiVo is already on a channel with a show that interests you. If you just hit the rewind button you can only go back to 5:10 and you would miss the first 10 minuted of the show, but if you hit the record button it somehow digs up the whole show, including the 10 minutes that weren’t available to rewind into. I discovered this quite by accident (though admittedly I don’t read manuals) and I am not sure why they would not make the entire buffer available to rewind, but it works. I can at least say this works on both my HD and normal Series DirecTivos. Both are dual tuner DirecTV integrated boxes and run slightly different software than the “mainstream” Series 2 boxes so I can’t be positive it works for them.
As for ReplayTV, they have had some way cool features that would have (and almost did) make me switch from TiVo a couple of years ago. They have the ability to stream shows from one box to another that TiVo still doesn’t have (notice I said stream, not copy before you correct me) and they had it a few years ago. Tivo didn’t even have a network interface yet. Replay had commercial skip, TiVo didn’t. The list goes on. Their achilles heel was their interface. First, the menuing, etc didn’t feel anywhere near as polished and intuitive as TiVo. My wife the neophyte had picked up the TiVo interface within an hour with almost no instruction. Now, I could live with a little less slick interface for the features, but changing channels was s-l-o-w! I mean, I felt like I could hit the channel up button, run pee and microwave some popcorn, come back and it might be done. OK, so that is an exaggeration, but it did take probably 5 seconds before anything came on the screen. If you channel surf (which I do) it was intolerable. Ended up taking it back because of that.
I’ve tried a couple of flavors of cable company DVR, but they all just sucked. The interfaces looked like they were trying to finish getting it coded before mom got home and caught them and they both had horrible lag on channel change. Admittedly so did the digital cable boxes (non DVR) but it was painful.
One cool feature the dish networks DVR had was the ability to record just selected portions of a show sorta VCRish. That is, say you want a segment off the news you just watched. You could just rewind to the beginning of the segment, hit record, play (or fast forward) to the end of the segment and stop it. You would end up with a recording of that segment. With the TiVo record gets you the whole show (excluding those parts that may have already scrolled out of buffer or happened before changing to that channel) or nothing. Oh well, I guess I’ll live.
I’ve also tried a number of PC based solutions but decided very quickly that I really really really do not want to have to deal with my TV crashing. And my wife (the neophye) feels even more strongly about it. PC’s crash, my TiVo never has (knock wood). ‘nuf said.
It’s a shame that the advantages touted over the TiVo by the M$ slaves are “plays music and photos”….. any Series 2 TiVo unit can do this as the Home Media Option (HMO) has been included for some time now. With the TiVo Desktop software running on a networked PC/Mac, you can access your playlists and view slideshows. That’s before adding any extra features such as javaHMO et al. In summary, I’ve not see a recent PC that’s as quiet and living room-friendly as a TiVo.
Hey,
I have comcast 6412, works pretty well, HDTV is great although sometimes it goofs off when recording or playing back HD stuff (glitches, annoying but livable). Price wise, is the same thing as DirectTV maybe a tad more expensive. But here is the real catch with Comcast. On Demand services, awsome! Most don;t have commercials. Watch shows on your own time. Bad thing, well no on demand HD yet that is free or included with your suscriptions yet. There is HD stuff with on demand, but all I’ve seen was ppv. $10 a month is not bad, as soon as they upgrade I instantly upgrade with them, you figure this is the same money than 1000 home brew pvr or DirectTv HD Tivo, which will be obsolete by then (maybe…)
Seriously though, on demand is almost worth the small extra dough.
I have a Mac, and there is a way to extract everything on the hard drive through the firewire port and some Firewire SDK utilities from apple. But you better have a big hard drive, not need for a powerful mac for capture, but defenitely for playback in ts HD format. I guess you can always scale it down… but I have not been capturing because i have not thought of a feasable way to play them back on my HDTV, to get the full glory picture again.
In any case, as far I know, MythTV is solid, but lacks proper support for ASTC (that will probably get fixed soon if not already). Yet digital cable support is still up in the air, and with all this brad cast flag and HDCP suff beign thrown around, it is going to get interesting in the next few months…
However…. keep an eye on VOOM.. for all those HD lovers like me that cry when they see SD content, they are going to bring a DVR soon. On that same note, DirecTV had a new bird on the sky and will soon have another, I bet they will compete.
Sorry for the long post.
I briefly considered Voom, but they are pretty close to dead. Two days ago, Gizmodo said they won’t make it to the end of the month. As of today, it still appeared Voom was going to go dark at the end of this month.
And yes I know about the Home Media music/photo features in TiVo Series 2. I’ve tried it and wasn’t especially impressed. Also, and more importantly, it doesn’t work with the HD DirecTiVo, which is the only TiVo I would consider getting today.
look at the series 2 TiVo please. it has many improvements (45 min buffer by default for one).
I have looked at the Series 2. It’s nicer, agreed, but the original was already pretty slick. The extra 15 minute buffer isn’t a big deal to me. Nor is the home media stuff, which feels like an add-on rather than a well-integrated feature.
Anyway, I have a “lifetime” TiVo subscription and don’t feel like paying $12.95 a month or $299 for another lifetime subscription to upgrade, even if the hardware is dirt-cheap.
i’ve had a tivo series 1 for 5 years and a scientific-atlanta 8000HD with SARA for almost a year.
the SA SARA box is a horrible excuse for a DVR and it pains me that people are jumping on these right-and-left and thinking “is this all there is to a DVR?”.
the tivo interface is like night and day compared to a SARA 8000HD.
but you forgot to mention the worst feature of the SA SARA solution: incredible sluggishness, particularly with “instant replay” button which takes a noticeably long amount of time to actually work.
i’d really like tivo to drop their monthly price back to $9.95 because i think that is a “magic” price point beyond which people won’t even consider the service.
something that confounds me is the number of complaints i hear about “monthly service fees” with tivo (not the cost, just that many people don’t like monthly fees) when the box lifetime service fee is available. does tivo not do enough to make that option known?
try mythtv ( http://www.mythtv.org ) or knoppmyth ( http://www.mysettopbox.tv an easy way to use mythtv)
with sensible settings and a 160 gig hard drive, which is pretty much standard in most home built computers, you are able to get around 120 hours of recording time, space for thousands of pictures, thousands of mp3’s, and have 8 hours of pause time.
also being linux based there are no virus threats, no patches for exploits, unless you offer complete access to the box to the internet, that you have to worry about.
How about the one other big issue, for anyone that has a big screen tv, or cares about picture quality? Unless you have a direcTivo (HD or regular) you’re recording the analog signal. The integrated cable box records the digital signal for a much improved picture quality. The difference when i gave up my directivo for a tivo standalone was HUGE, and makes me want to switch to the cable company PVR every time I watch a show.
I currently own a generation 1 ReplayTV (showstopper), HTPC running SageTV and just added a motorola 6412 running MS foundation. I’ve switched to using the motorola 6412 for almost all my recording because it offers the 1 killer feature I need, HDTV recording over cable. Is it as elegant as my ReplayTV device? No way. I doesn’t offer 30 second skip or have as nice a UI. Is it as customizeable as my SageTV? Nope, not even close. It’s a closed system, with fixed hard drive size but it’s cheap ($5 a month), records HDTV, has dual tuners and will do what 95% of the population requires from a PVR.
That’s why Tivo is dead. They failed to capitalize on their brand equity by licensing out their OS when they had the chance. Cable & Sat providers are willing to give away the hardware in order to lock you into the service. They will do “enough” to satisfy the masses. They will appease Hollywood by enabling broadcast flags. They will drive the independents out of business and only the hackers willing to run software packages like Myth or Sage will be able to get around the system but the masses will be placified. Me, I’ll keep the HTPC and the cable box, recording to both and adding some opencable HDTV device into the HTPC once they become available to keep maximum flexibility.
TiVo series 2 units also allow for scheduling recordings via the web and grouping shows into folders. I wasn’t suggesting that you should upgrade, just that you should compare apples to apples.
DirecTiVo units are only expensive if you want something that does HDTV. Otherwise the basic untis range from dirt cheap to free on signup. In many areas DirecTV is cheaper than cable. Sadly DirecTiVo units are all stuck at software version 3.x without the nice new features that stand alone units have in later software versions. Thats directv’s fault, they want to sell their own el-cheapo custom pvrs instead.
The price of a DirecTiVo HDTV unit is similar to what you’d pay for a MCE PC with HDTV capability but the MCE PC would have less tuners. If anyone owns HDTV equipment today they have no reason to complain about the price of their pvr that is dwarfed next to the price of the television set they already paid for.
A lifetime tivo sub is also unnecessary for any directivo as its a single $5/month charge for “tivo service” regardless of how many directivos you own (as opposed to stand alone units where its a per tivo charge).
Its sad to hear that the cable box pvrs are so pathetic but still label their features the same way. thats going to make people think all pvrs are shit and can’t keep track of recording a show rather than a timeslot.
series 1 directivo owner / future MythTV user
The most important missing feature:
All of these systems have the same problem (AFAICT), and I am suprised Ed, that as a Lost fan, you missed it.
The problem is when the Networks get creative with thier scheduleing and set a show to end @ say 9:02pm for LOST last night… All of the systems show that as an overlap and won’t record any show that starts @ 9pm (like Idol, or West Wing). This is the feature I would really like to see happen.
It seems simple enough to allow the slight overlap (settable to X minutes) of programs, where the higher priority show records the whole show, and the you miss the first or last 2 mins of the lower priority show. Personally, I don’t care if I miss the first 2 mins of Idol to catch the last 2 mins of Lost.
Am I crazy here? Or do others see the same problem?
Above users were talking about the speed transfer with 802.11b, which is/was my biggest complaint with my two Series 2 Tivos.
I decided that it was worth it to be to get two ethernet USB adapters and hook them to two 802.11g wireless bridges (running the SuperG). Now I get speeds of around 20 minutes to transfer a 1 hour show between the Tivos or to my computer. These are recorded at the best quality.
I have played around also with burning a show on a DVD using the recommended software that Tivo pushes, it is not that great. OK to use, but the quality is not that great in my opinion.
I worked with MCE a bunch and liked the quality that had on burning DVD’s.
Soul Master,
My TiVo recorded the extra 2 minutes of Lost just fine… No tweaking of extra record time needed.
TiVo, MCE, and the 8300HD all record Lost just fine, including the last two minutes. The problem is with the single-tuner TiVo, which won’t start up The West Wing properly when it comes on at 9:00 PM because Lost, which ends at 9:02 or 9:03, is still recording.
With a two-tuner box, it’s not a problem, but with a single-tuner box, whichever program is higher on the series priority list will win and the other one won’t get recorded.
Ahhh, but it IS a problem with a two-tuner box if you have two shows set to record at 9:00. I have season passes for Lost (highest priority of the three), American Idol (next highest of the three) and King of Queens (lowest of those three). Because Lost is on until 8:02, when both American Idol and King of Queens start, the King of Queens simply doesn’t record at all since it sees it as a conflict.
I have gotten around this issue by setting up a recurring manual recording for the Idol results show that starts at 8:05. I really do wish the software could be more intuitive and see conflicts of less than five minutes as a different type of problem.
That said, I’ve been a DirecTV subscriber since year one and a Tivo user since year one. This is the only Tivo programming issue I still have. My other issues (broadband dial-in capability, network transfers) all have to do with DirecTV’s reluctance to update software that the stand-alone users are enjoying.
Yes, it is a problem if you have two programs set to record after the slightly-longer-than- normal one. The networks that schedule shows to run two minutes longer than the standard time slot think they’re being clever, but they’re just being jerks.
OK, I’m not sure how to leave this in the trackback section, but I have a blog entry about this one:
http://klbarrus.blogspot.com/2005/03/dvr-comparison.html
You people watch too much TV! lOST IS AWESOME HOWEVER
I have an 80-Hour Series 2 Tivo on a wireless network with a broadband connection, 3 regular TVs, and an HDTV. I plan to buy another Tivo to handle conflicts and storage issues, and maybe a laptop, but am holding out for a Tivo that records HD from cable (and built-in dvd recording would be nice, although they now have Tivo-to-go). Two Tivos should be enough, but I would like to route the content of the Tivo over the wireless network to other TVs, and maybe even outdoors to a laptop, without having to buy another box and subscription. I could run a cable, but I don’t want to. Maybe Tivo could offer a stripped down relay box for this purpose. I probably will end up with 3 Tivos anyway just to handle 3-way programming conflicts.
ReplayTV all the way baby! Tivo is like the AOL of PVRs, easy to use but pretty limited. ReplayTV is like the Internet – a little more challenging but much more flexible.
And as for “ease of use” – my wife picked up the ReplayTV remote within around 5 minutes.
CableCards will change everything. TiVo has already announced HD TiVo Models that will accept CableCards. One box, great interface, TiVoToGo, HDTV.
If it’s got DVI and HDMI outputs I’ll buy it the day it ships.
Very informative article. I’m a Tivo convert because it’s so easy even my 3 year old can use it. The MCE is another ballgame altogether for the person that wants the most features and the most complexity to go along with that. Personally, I don’t want another power hungry computer in my stereo cabinet. And I don’t trust Windows enough to leave it on fulltime without catching all sorts of nasty crap off the ‘net.
I would like to know, how many times MCE has crashed
over a period of, say, a year? How many times it had to be rebooted? How much user time it needs to keep the system up do date? How much noise does it generate? How much does it cost?
MCE might have a good feature set to compete with TIVO but kicking the tires is not enough to decide which technology is better. I recommend you do a year long head head usage comparison…
Cheers…
Cool article. I’ve been enjoying our very reliable copy of MCE for a couple of months now. I’d like to know more about the “third-party software for DVDs” that Ed mentioned. That was my big disappointment with MCE, that it didn’t do that natively (DVD-player compatible DVD burning.)
I remember when VCRs came out with that “reaction time” feature. I’m surprised SARA doesn’t implement it, it’s a great idea that pre-dates digital video recording.
Uh, I had MythTV for a while – all the features of MCE and then some. Problem was the capture card software – ivtv – was to unstable for me. Switched to MCE 2005. No problems yet. You have to buy:
1. MPEG Decoder (Get the one from NVidia – $19.95)
2. DVD Burning Software around $49.95 for Sonic
Couple issues with MCE:
1. Even though I set a series record limit, say 4, it always prompt’s me that it has reached the limit. Annonying.
2. It does not have a “importance” feature. Say I like the Daily Show more than Friends. They both come on at 10:00. I always want to record the Daily Show so I set it with a “+5” setting vs. Friends “0” setting, therefore +5 beats 0 and the Jon gets recorded. MythTV has this feature – was very cool – Tivo has it too I think, very important feature MCE lacks.
My hope? Micro$oft fixes these problems and I get a cable HD tuner card for Xmas 🙂
Peace.
Jason, the series settings feature does have what you’re looking for. Go to Recorded TV, then click Scheduled, Series, Change Priorities. Just put The Daily Show higher on the list than Friends. This setting works just like the TiVo equivalent.
I own three ReplayTV 5040s (each hacked with 200G drives). I wouldn’t trade them…. EVER. Hooked into my 802.11G wireless, I can watch any recorded show from any Replay unit. They AUTOMATICALLY skip commercials without having to touch a remote. I can copy the shows to my PC and burn them to DVD. My wife LOVES the setup, learned how to operate everything in about 10 minutes and routinely watches shows downstairs in the livingroom that were recorded on the ReplayTV upstairs in the bedroom.
I bought the ReplayTVs for the automatic commercial skip to protect my three year old from the crappy commercials they put in children’s cartoons. Now they are all recorded and he never sees a commercial….
my roomate has a series II TiVo and i just recently got a DVR running passport(its a motorola box i forget the model number though) through my cable company so ive had the chance to play around with both, and in a nutshell The TiVo interface gives it a bit of a leg up in the functionality dept. the passport has near the same type of season pass functionality (TiVo’s is a little bit eaiser to use IMO). So i guess as far as pros and cons go the passport was eaiser to set up and you has dual tuners, TiVo’s interface and ease of use once its set up is better and the 45 minute buffer and ability to save (passport cannot) works better.
somone said that TiVo was the AOL of DVR’s…actually the cable company DVR’s feel more like the AOL of DVR’s TiVo’s i guess are like a good ISP if you want to continue the anaology….they have a few minor “issues” but are very good and usable
enjoyed the article and discussion thanks!
2minute overlap…
SageTV does EXACTLY what you said when you don’t have enough tuners installed. It gets the 2mins from the higher priority show and then records the other just fine. In fact AFAIK it doest matter if its 2 or 10 mins…(no idea if there is a limit).
I also find the mini-rewind after fast-forwarding can be problematic. Not because it’s a bad feature, but because TiVo won’t let me set it. My reaction time is obviously much faster than the intended user and as a result I’ve had to learn to fast-forward past what I want in order to get things to start at the proper time. It’s a great feature, it just needs some tweaking.
This, however, is the bigger problem with Tivo. For a system that does allow a great deal of tweaking (or, AFAIK allowed more back in Series 1) there really isn’t much power in most of the features. Searching to record a title is just a quick page through the list, not a real search. Wishlists don’t let me employ boolean searches (I would often love to have the option to specific NOT options). There’s no method of showing how much space is on the hard drive other than educated guessing. Etc.
In this manner it’s very much like my iPod: a wonderful device that does it’s job well, but still has plenty of less obvious flaws for those who wish to get the most out of the machine. In this case as with Apple the blame is to be placed on over-designing it to be simple and easy, rather than functional or powerful.
I gave up my Series 1 Tivo box originally for a Scientific Atlanta 8000 Standard definition DVR running Pioneer’s Passport software in August of 2003. The original reason had more to do with getting rid of my home phone service then it had to do with any kind of services. The price of the monthly service was identical at that time but home phone service was something I could live without. Since that time I have upgraded to the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD and then again to the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. I “lease” the equipment from the cable company so it didn’t cost me a thing to upgrade. The new 8300 with the HDMI connection and the Passport software is incredible. The only real service I miss from my TIVO box is being able to search by star or title. There is a title search on the SA DVR but it only gives you the first letter so you have to do a lot of paging through all the titles starting with that letter. One thing I don’t miss is the price. I pay 10.50 for the box (same price for a regular digital cable box) and 9.45 a month for the service. The 9.45 I pay also comes with an addition 5 HD Channels including ESPN HD. I have the NASCAR IN CAR package and the dual tuner allows me to switch from FOX/NBC to the IN CAR broadcast and the box stores at least the last half hour of both broadcasts so I rewind back to anything I miss on either broadcast. I know that under certain circumstances heat and other factors have contributed to issues with drive failures in some of the Scientific Atlanta DVRs but the box belongs to the cable company so if one of mine ever fails I can just swap the unit for another one without having to worry about paying for service repair or unit replacement. As long as Tivo requires me to have a home phone line and keeps it’s pricing over 10 dollars I just can’t see myself ever going back. The only thing that makes me nervous after reading this article is that I know Pioneer has stopped making cable boxes and rumors are that the Passport software is going to follow suit quickly. I called my cable rep and they said that rumor was my cable company was designing its own software. Hopefully that’s true so I don’t get stuck with the SARA software.
I think this article is slightly unfair to the cable DVR boxes. I understand that you’re stuck with SARA, but Passport is far and away a much better piece of software. And the 8300 boxes – with their faster processors and more RAM – are much more snappy than the 8000SD or even the 8000HD.
TiVo is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I know only 1 person with a TiVo, but several with cableco DVRs – because of price. You simply can’t beat $6.95/mo for an HD cable box with a built-in DVR. And if the cableco DVR breaks? Just swap it out.
TiVo needs to either GIVE AWAY their boxes and charge by the month or include a lifetime subscription in the price of the box. People generally want an either\or on this (look at the mobile phone market) and TiVo needs to decide which way they wantto go with this.
Just FYI: Pogue’s columns are now all available for free. I think he pushed for it, reasoning that the tech review archive ought to be available as restaurant reviews are.
I first got DVR service 2 1/2 years ago through Dish Network. When my Dish508 DVR started to get a little out dated (in my eyes) I started researching MCE and MythTV. The one problem I have with Stand alone devices such as HTPC’s and Tivo is they have to re-encode the video stream. I ultimately went with Dish’s new DishPVR 522. I find it to be superior to most options out there. I really like the ability to pump two separate shows (live or recorded) to two different TV’s in the house. I have one 522 that I use for both my living room TV, and Bedroom TV (upstairs). The setup works almost perfectly.
I think at some point I will switch to MCE or MythTV once IPTV becomes available. This should allow HPTC’s to control your experience directly instead of relying on an addition settop box from your cable or satellite provider.
I have a short write up on my website about the Dish522.
http://www.dlresonance.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“I can copy any recording to DVD in WMD format…”
YIKES! The FBI just showed up at your house.
Ed said: “I could put together a list of MCE-only features that I especially like. For instance, the Movies button lets me scroll through all movies available in the current guide, sorted by rating. Once a week I go through and pick out a selection of great films from Turner Movie Classics, American Movie Classics, HBO, Starz, and Sundance Channel, which means I always have a selection of interesting movies to watch. I can copy any recording to DVD in WMD format or use a third-party program to make a disk that will play in any DVD player. And I can use my Media Center Extender to play anything from the Media Center PC (which is in the den) on the TV in the bedroom.”
None of these are “MCE only.”
Tivo’s guide (in either TV Guide Channel grid or Tivo Grid style) provides a simple “Movies” filter which will only show movies in the guide, on any channel. Its not on a separate menu, and its as intuitive as the regular guide.
Check out the TivoCommunity forums. Many people with half a brain have figured out how to use TivoToGo to burn editted DVDs from our recorded programs. Yes, for those without a DVD-burner built into their Tivo there is the extra step of transferring the recording. But as FREE software upgrades go, TivoToGo is more than worth the time to master.
If “anything” means music and pictures, the Series 2 Tivo has included, for free since mid-2004), the Home Media option. I can play any music or photo file on my home PC on my Tivo (yes, even WMA if you know how). If it means video, then the Home Media option also allows a user to transfer shows from one Tivo to another anywhere on the same network. Since a 40-hour Tivo costs only a little more than the MC Extender (in the final tally 2 Tivos with lifetime will still cost less than 1 MCE PC, with or without Extender), its a perfectly comparable capability.
But lets face it, MCE probably is more useable and capable than Tivo. But, given that a decent MCE PC with an equivalent capacity and a decent tuner (lacking immensely until the ATI TV-Wonder Elite came out – to say nothing of pre-MCE 2005’s miserable S-Video picture quality) runs around $1500 (I’m being generous), while a 140-hour Tivo with lifetime subscription costs $600, I would expect MCE to be more useful. Why bother with MCE if I can get the never-crash, always on (with low power consumption), effortlessly intuitive, only-slightly-less-capable Tivo for less than half the price? (Keep in mind, too, that Tivo has great tech-support and performance never slows down–you don’t ever have to defrag the drive, because it never gets fragged in the first place.)
Yup, I’ve got 12 Tivos with DirecTV, 9 Standard Definition, 3 High Definition. I’ve played with MCE and I have to say on the feature set covered in the article, good points and I really really want to use MCE. However, the fact that MCE can’t support cable or satellite in HD makes it a no go for me. The fact that I can record both over-the-air HD channels and DirecTV HD channels on my HD Tivos is just not something that I can live without, especially considering how many rooms I feed with those HD signals. The last thing I want is to buy another solution and build in redundancy into every room.
One clarification I saw in this article that I wasn’t aware of was MCE’s support for dual tuners, I had thought this wasn’t out yet so I’m happy to hear that. My problem however is that I probably need a minimum of four tuners in one box for it to be a truly better solution for me (although the ease of porting recordings to other media storage devices is definitely something that makes me like MCE).
I’m still recommending Tivos for my friends and they’re loving them, and in most cases they’ve more than happily chucked their cable DVRs. The issue there for Tivo is that people don’t know what they don’t know (i.e. they’re not familiar with the Tivo feature set so they don’t know what they’re missing…and ignorance is bliss, so…)
On another note, as much as I’d love for Tivo to stick around, I pretty much think they’re doomed (my girlfriend yells blasphemer at me every time I say this). By the way, thanks Tivo for my IPOD with the Tivo logo engraved on the back 🙂
Good write-up!
I’ve been with DirecTV since the beginning and I got a Tivo right when the Sony T60 Dual Tuner box came out. The only problem I have with it is that it’s now outdated, and while i love my HD DTV box, i am not willing to shell out the exorbitant cost for a HD Tivo.
I like the idea of MCE, but… as someone who loves his home theater equipment… you’ll never see a traditional computer adorning the shelves of my theater.
The normal consumer will not do it either. It’s too much to set up and handle. The MCE is definitely making progress, though I think thats because TiVo is making some bad decisions on how to move forward with their company. They stagnate and MCE moves forward.
MythTV? I checked it out… but no way am I going to deal with having to set it up. (and again, theres the whole “computer” thing.)
Tivo needs to bring the price down, MCE needs to go in a dedicated box, and linux solutions need to be simplified and boxed, or pre-installed.
Great post…
I have a Scientific Atlanta box with Passport, so I thought I’d add to your list point by point:
1) Retroactive Recording – Passport does this up to the 1 hour buffer. Excellent feature.
2) Wish List – Like the SARA version, the Passport version has no such search function; however, the new version of Passport called “Echo” doese include a search function. It is unclear when the CableCos will upgrade to the newer version.
3) Reaction Time – Passport does this very smartly. It compensates for each ff speed, jumping back in time a bit more for the fastest ff speed.
4) 30 Sec Skip – Passport, like SARA, does not have such a button. It does have the handy skip back button.
5) Season Pass – Passport has selections for first run or first run & repeats; however, like the SARA it doesn’t compensate for changes in time slots or schedules. This can be annoying. Of particular annoyance is the inability to change the start time of a recording to a few minutes late to compensate for the broadcasters new habit of mucking with start times, like ABC ending lost at 9:03 instead of 9, which results in Passport recording Lost just fine, but messing up recordings in the 9-10 slot.
6) TivoToGo – Passport has no support for this right now.
7) Folder Groupings – Like SARA, Passport only provides a crude listing based on the record date
8) Smart Offers – When stopping a recording mid stream, Passport asks if you want to continue watching, stop the recording, or delete.
9) Retroactive TV Guide- Like SARA, Time Warner’s Passport only allows for 6 days in the future. It does allow you to look back a couple of hours in the past, but this is of limited usefullness.
10) Recording Log – Passport provides no such log
For the most part I’d have to say that the Time Warner SA box with Passport is a decent and capable box. Although there have been reports of crashing and other issues, for the most part I have been satisfied with my boxes. Of course I’d love more features; however, I wouldn’t give up the integrated two tuner approach for anything else.
A couple of points:
I have been a dedicated TiVo (series 2) user for over a year now – overall I have been very happy with the service, performance and reliability.
I do however have a MCE PC as well. I actually prefer the MCE to my TiVo for a couple of reasons.
First – Music and Pictures from the PC on the TiVo are almost unusable – I played around with that feature for about 30 minutes and gave up because it isn’t user freindly at all. Some people discount this feature and the whole pictures on your TV thing, but this is our favorite feature by far!
Second – The Movies feature on MCE is 100% better than the search feature on TiVo – you really have to see this to understand. Instead of just listing the movies in alpha order MCE gives you “album art” for each movie that is available in your current guide.
Third – Yes, the MCE PC is a louder than the TiVo – you have a few options here: 1. Deal with it (not preferred). 2. Use a Media Center Extender to remote the MCE UI to any TV in the house. This does cost $250, but is a very cool solution to the noise problem. 3. There are MCE boxes that have fanless video cards and almost silent fans. These are obviously going to cost a bit more, but some of the living room form factors from companies like Alienware and Gateway are very cool – and would fit in your component rack.
All this said – I can’t discount the price issue. The way I see it, if you are planning on buying a new PC in the next year or so just buy a Media Center, but if you are not in the market for a new PC any time soon, stick with Tivo or your cable company box (I have experienced the Comcast HD box and would sell my Tivo for it if I had an HD TV…)
Amazing reading the comments here about MythTV, MCE or other non-HD solutions. Unless all you care about is OTA MythTV is not a option. You need a integrated DVR for HDTV right now if you are a cable or satellite user. Do you MythTV or MCE shills really think your solutions are viable long term?
At least cable card might give HD cable users an option in the future for multiple options.
HD Satellite users are stuck, and we get to take whatever DirecTV, EchoStar, or VOOM shove down our throats. And since DirecTV is probably not going to support MPEG4 with Tivo, its a crap shoot what we’ll end up with. I will be referring back to this article and other checklists after I see DirecTV’s new solution and see what they missed.
Realize some people, believe it or not, have satellite as their only option?!
I love my tivos and I love my computers. I don’t want them messing with each other. My tivos are absolutely reliable my computers are a different story. My panasonic dmr-e80h provides a second tuner and recorder if necessary, allows editing and archiving of shows from my tivos. I can then slip the recorded dvd disks into my laptop as I choose. I have a 30hr series 1 and a 140 hr series 2. The series 1 does a better job better
reproduction, faster response, more sensitive ir receiver etc. go figure.
I’ve had DTV and running the DTV/ Tivo combo unit for 2 years and it has been a dream a TV lover. Never had a problem recording, excellent customer service from DTV and no problems with the unit (80hr) until a few months ago when one of the tuners went bad on the unit. DTV sent me a new one free a couple days later and my contract was extended only 6 months.
I have sinced moved to a wired Comcast building. At first the Comcast pricing was out of hand! I was paying $55 for DTV w/ local channels and HBO package with TIVO. Cable comprobale would be $80. Comcast does have a Dish Buyback program that I have used where I turn in my DTV/ Tivo unit and now its $57/ month for HBO, Showtime and the Comcast DVR (which is nicely out of stock). I would stayed with Tivo if they had a dual tuner box and I have yet to play with the Comcast DVR so I have no frame of refernce on its advantages/ disadvantages. The On Demand feature is an amazing idea for Cable companies and if they can strike a deal with the networks to library their current series and syndicators to library their older shows it would be the absolute godsend. Imagine having every Seinfeld on demand, or every Lost, every A Team…well no, not the A Team, but you get what I’m saying. The true downside is dealing with Comcast Customer Service…absolutely horrible wait times, everytime I call in its a looooong wait (30-60 min) and I get different answers each time I call.
Again, if I had my choice I would keep DTV w/ Tivo for the service, ease of use and performance reputation.
I use ReplayTV and find that it is better than the alternatives in some ways and lags behind in others. To go through Pogue’s list first:
Retroactive recording. Replay does not do this nearly as well as TiVo. You can rewind within the live buffer, but not record the program going back.
Wish list. Yes– you can create a search or use one of the program “zones.”
Built-in reaction time. Nope. The skip back button is useful to mitigate this. But then, the automatic commercial advance feature negates much of the need to compensate for this.
30-second skip. Yes, with no need to hack. Replay also has the ability to navigate through program segments (commercial breaks) using the right and left arrow keys.
Season pass. Yes. However, Replay lags behind TiVo in the ability to set the relative priority of theme channels (Replay’s terminology for a season pass.) Replay does offer the option to schedule recordings only for new episodes or only episodes airing at a certain time during the day.
Recordings to Go. With the free DVArchive software, which is available for Mac and any other program which can run a Java application, not just Windows, like TiVo or MCE. The Replay can also play programs stored on a networked computer with DVArchive.
Smart offers. Like MCE, Replay offers the options to delete whenever you stop (rather than pause) playback or when you reach the end of a program.
Retroactive TV guide. Yes.
Like standalone TiVo, replayTV only has one tuner. Two or more networked ReplayTVs in a house can work together to record everything, however. That doesn’t really help those who have only one television (and the cost of two ReplayTV units with service activation drives it up towards the cost of an MCE system and beyond the cable or satellite multiple tuner DVRs)
I just got a Sony Windows Media Center machine last week, and it works well, but it’s still Windows. When it works, it’s great. It seems to work well, but you never know what has the sound card, so sometimes you get no audio and have to reboot to reset the darn thing. Haven’t tried streaming content to a wireless linksys box on my TV, but that’s next. I’m already anticipating “How come I lose my video stream when my cordless phone rings?”
I think the Tivo is great for plug and play folks who aren’t tech geeks. But MCE is probably a niche product at this point, because you have to know how to troubleshoot PC issues from time to time.
I had hoped to see more here than a simple comparison of features — there is much to the experience than comparing a list of features.
MCE is a train wreck. I was able to get it to work, but you have to be motivated to figure it out, and keep it patched. No one wants their VCR to crash. No one wants to keep their VCR security patched. No one wants a show they were watching to sudddenly be interrrupted by another application running the background.
MCE fails in the same way that PocketPC fails. Lots of people use PocketPC, but my dad doesn’t have one. Most people that I know don’t have one. It’s a niche product. MCE is a niche product as well because Microsoft can’t see any other way to do things. They have to make their products all work and behave inside the same “family”, even if it doesn’t make sense. It makes no sense to have a start menu, or even nested heirarchies, on a small display, but Microsoft does it on the PocketPC.
I tried MCE for almost a year, and just finished parting out my media box. I lost money on the deal, but I am happy. I have learned so much about how “intelligent media boxes” should behave in the living room. Microsoft is so yesterday. They are emulating a series 1 tivo, with more stuff. But they are hardly pushing the metaphor further — unlike projects such as MythTV, which is.
I say: buy the cheapest thing that does the job, because the technology is going to change rapidly in the next couple of years. MCE is not it — it is actually the most expensive solution. Forget about the possibilty of upgrading the box to extend it’s life — there is false economy in that. Get a cablebox PVR with all the warts — get a series 2 Tivo — get an Akimbo if you want to be bleeding edge — or do like I didn and get a Mac mini/EyeTV with CyTV……….
Comparing TiVo to ReplayTV, the ReplayTV is a better option considering a couple of things TiVo is missing..’Commercial skip’ and ‘Internet Video Sharing’ (IVS). Although this functionality is going away with the 5500 series, there are still 4500 & 5000 series still available. (Although, now I’ve seen people getting IVS on 5500 with a little hacking – buyer beware as software upgrades could disable on these units.) Commercial Skip – true commercial skipping, no user intervention required..much better than a 30 sec skip button. IVS – I can send shows over the internet to friends or family who have the same unit as I – I’m sharing shows with my Mom in Japan, where there’s no good content. There’s quite an IVS community at Poopli.com in case you miss an episode of your favorite show – just go request it there and get it IVS’ed to you in no time. Also, a ’30 sec Skip’ button is on the remote to quickly skip through boring parts of a show.
ReplayTV comes with all of the other features, too (the one exception is the MP3 storage/sharing). You also get UNLIMITED live buffer (only limited by HD size) unlike the TiVo’s 30 min buffer. ReplayTVs are also remote programmable over the internet through MyReplayTV.com.
The sharing of recorded programs (between two units in your home) on the ReplayTV is even easier in that copying is not necessary (TiVo makes you copy to 2nd unit before playing) – shows can be streamed from one unit to the other, therefore one show will not take up space on two PVRs. No extra functionality needs to be bought. Unfortunately for me (but fortunate for TiVo), the interaction with iPhoto and iTunes is not possible on the ReplayTV at this time – only transferring (copying) photos to the ReplayTV – a separate partition is set aside for photos (usually 1GB, but can be increased if you wish).
Finally, one of the biggest benefits of ReplayTV is the ability to archive these MPEG-2 recordings by copying them right from the ReplayTV to my Mac via a program called DVArchive. This program also allows users to stream the archived shows back to their ReplayTV – basically, my Mac can act as another ReplayTV unit on the network! (DVArchive is also the Mac user’s program of choice to upload pics to their ReplayTV.) Archiving, Editing, Burning these shows that I’ve recorded on my ReplayTV allows me to remove the episodes for future viewing pleasure, freeing up space to record even more shows. This feature basically gives me a ReplayTV with unlimited space. While I have upgraded some of mine to 250GB HDs, it’s not even really necessary. My SuperDrive gets quite a workout archiving shows to DVD-R – no more VCR tapes! Even making DVDs to play in the DVD player is an option with these files.
While TiVo does give you much better interaction with iPhoto and iTunes, I would say, and many ReplayTV users would also say: TiVo is great, but ReplayTV is better.
Oh yea, there are even Xbox hacks to add it to a ReplayTV network to play your Replay shows.
Go pick up one of the 5000 series on sale if you can find ’em.
Media Center PC as much more than a DVR — we’ve got Music, Pictures, Videos, Radio (Internet and FM) plus third parties bringing great content to consumers via Online Spotlight in addition to the DVR features.
I also just installed a product from http://www.homeseer.com
This product plugs into my MCE 2005 Control lighting, security, HVAC and home theatre all from one central point with your MCE 2005PC. Access your PC via the web, your home network, PDA, telephone or voice!
NOW CAN TIVO do that?
I saw a link to this article on the OpenDTV discussion list. I dumped my Tivo in favor of an MCE box early last year, and it’s the best choice I’ve ever made. Even my wife, a perennial technophobe, likes the MCE better than the Tivo. I have an HDTV that supports 1920×1080 progressive (not interlaced), and have it hooked to the MCE via DVI – this is the only way to go for best quality on both standard and HD content. Also, need to get the new graphic card drivers from ATI that lets you reduce the desktop size to eliminate overscan.
One of my favorite MCE features that I didn’t see anyone mention is the Movie Finder feature in the Guide.
Not only can you search through all of the movies that are in the guide via the clean album-art interface (with Cast&Crew info, etc), but you can also search for movies that ARE NOT in the Guide. At this point, you can tell MCE to record that movie whenever it does happen to show on TV, and MCE will do it.
Always wanted to see Bridge on the River Kwai but its not going to be on TV anytime soon and you don’t really feel like its worth running out to rent? Just tell MCE Movie Finder to record it next time it does comes on. Now you can forget about remembering to look for it, and someday you’ll get a pleasant surprise in your “recent recordings”.
Nice!
Good write-up. What I miss is Microsoft’s UltimateTV, which came with my DirecTV service a while back. It inexpensively support two tuners and had a terrific search facility.
TiVo series two also includes the home media center option, allowing you to play music (not WM files–MP3 only) and view pictures. Not very elegant, but it works.
When will MS build DVR capabilities into an XBox?
I heard that the MCE extenders will not play copywrite protected content. Did anyone hear this. Also do the extenders lack any of the features of the MCE pc?
A patch issued in December allows extenders to play any content that can be played on the main MCE box, including protected content.
As for features, the only ones that are missing (as far as I remember) are the ability to play DVDs and the ability to display visualizations during music playback. Oh, and it’s difficult (maybe impossible) to play any content in formats that require third-party codecs.
It seems everyone is gripeing bout the sara software.I have just gotten a 8300hd with the enhanced sara software.The new version has first run option plus several new features.You can now set sara by day and time.It has a new gate to let you know hw much recordin space ia available.It has a archive to vcr option.You can now watch a recorded show,archive one show to vcr and record 2 shows at the same time.There is absolutely no remote lag and i mean no lag at all changeing channels.It has a new power save mode that cuts dvr off late at night but still records any programs u have set.You can also erase any repeated shows comeing up in the time slot you have chosen if it shows on different days.You canset it to record repeating manual recordings mon-friday,weekends,or any single day mon.tues.wed.thurs.fri.sat.sun.This new sara meets or equals passport in almost every way.I understand all sara dvrs will soon be upgraded with new super software package.
It’s April, and Voom is still here:-)
And it is by far the best for HD content!
You should really give it a try, it’s only a buck to install.
Also about the moded xbox thing, not that I know from experience 😉 but if you mod it and get xbox media center combined with bit torrent you have an online cabable gaming system, dvd player, and pvr all in one. Plus with bit torrent you don’t pay for any of the shows you watch. You do have to wait to watch your shows, for me thats not a problem though. Illegal yes I know, and not really for novices but hey its only a crime if you get caught.
Pls l want to get to know how the DVR card would be install on a computer the steps.
with writup on it.
Thanks.
Patrick
First off, great article! Even though you recommend MCE I don’t think you gave it enough justice. There is a lot of power behind having FULL control over your media. For example, I have started to go totally media-less. Meaning I am ripping all my DVD’s to the network file server and having all my DVD’s on demand! It is sweet, no more media. Same is true with music. There is so many add-ons to the product also. Like being able to control your lighting or emulating 8bit Nintendo games, etc. I am glazing over all the features on purpose you should check it out for your self. There are tons of stores that have demos and I know the product sells it’s self.
In addition to those features you can truely start to consolidate your devices. I got fed up about a year ago when dish wanted me to have yet another box for HD. I’m thinking this is crazy. My entertainment stand looks like my server racks at work… I want simple, I am past the go to this remote for TV, that remote for audio volume, this one for DVD’s. I want one and thats what MCE will do.
Thanks for letting me ramble,
Mike
You know what The Explorer sucks my ass. Where does a cable company or anyone else get off charging you for something that your dvr does. Shouldn’t the rental fee for the box cover the cost of everything the unit is able to do? No that isn’t enough the have to mask the dvr service as a pvr service and charge you another $10.00 a month. Seriously WTF?
I really need some help with the SA 8300HD. I can’t use the remote control for Media edition and I am unable to get the channels to change on the PC. Can you help?
Sorry, William, I’ve moved out of the Cox service area and no longer have the SA8300HD. Have you tried the Yahoo group for 8000/8300 owners? Go to Yahoogroups.com and look for a group named Explorer_8000.
I’ve got a DirecTivo, with two tuners and all the bells and whistles. I paid $49 for the unit after the rebate. Since I’m already a ‘premium service’ member (I get the pay channels) the monthly DirecTivo service is waived.
So I’ve got a total $49 investment with zero additional montly cost.
So I can have that, or pay for an MS operating system (complete with all the inherent problems – virii, security holes, etc), then dedicate some of my existing PC hardware to it or purchase PC hardware for it to run on, then go out and buy TV tuner cards for it.
At best your comparison is fatally flawed and at worst it exhibits bias or an agenda.
Yes you can do more with Media Center – however the two devices are in completely different leagues. It’s like comparing my Toyota Supra to a Bentley Arnage. Yes they both go like stink, but they are built to meet completely different goals.
Sorry, you missed the mark on this one.
Mike D…
“zero additional monthly cost”? You pay DirecTV $5.99 a month for that box. Check your bill.
Oh, and the plural of virus is viruses, not virii.
And no, I have no bias or agenda. I actually own two TiVos, but if you made me choose I would go with the Media Center.
Actually DirecTV DOES wave the Tivo service fee if you have a high enough program package, check their web site. They will also wave the fee sometimes when calling their retnetion department.
John,
To get the $5.99 charge waived, you need to have the Total Choice Premier package, whch is $93.99 a month and includes every premium channel. I don’t know how many people click that button, but most people who just want DirecTV service choose one of the lesser options, which means they pay $5.99.
Does anyone have problems with the MCE not recording/playing sound? It’s very idiosynchratic but annoying. Microsoft link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907566/en-us says there is no fix – just hoping for a suggestion
Tivo series 2 has other cool features not mentioned. Now, being a networked appliance, it has slick add-ons. You can view recordings from one Tivo on any other Tivo on the network, and if one Tivo can’t record a show because of a conflict, it can request another Tivo on the network to record it. Also, you can play your songs or music from a networked computer on the Tivo, download original content from the web (CNet tips and Rocketboom), as well as several new java-based tools from Galleon like Yahoo Traffic, webcams. Finally, Tivo remembers that you’ve watched and deleted a show (for two weeks) and won’t re-record it if it comes back on again. Really nice when SciFi channel does a “Chain-Reaction” or “Marathon”.
I am have a problem with skip and fast forward. They jump back 15 minutes the first time you hit the button and then they go forward. I have 2 Hauppauge dual-tuner cards, pvr-500s. Hauppauge says that it is an application issue and Microsoft 1st level tech support was no help.
I’ve had a MCE for about 6 months now, but due to the fact I was moving I only just recently got it hooked up to my cable and I LOVE it! My family has had TiVo since it was introduced and I’ve always thought it was a great tool, but I never got it myself b/c it requires a phone line and I’ve used nothing but a cell phone for the past 4 years and certainly wasn’t going to get a phone line JUST so I could record TV shows. I understand that there were some issues (or rather, lack of functionality) with MCE 2004, but MCE 2005 is just amazing. FAR superior overall to the TiVo I’ve been used to, and thanks to external hard drives (as well as the enormous hard drive my PC came with) I’ve in virtually no danger of running out of space anytime soon (at last count I think I have about 150 hours of recording time left on the “best” quality setting). I also have a 2-tuner TV card so I can watch and record multiples as well as HDTV support. I’ve switched back and forth between the TV and the cable box and have noticed virtually no difference in the quality of the picture as well. I also haven’t had any issues with my skip or fast forward – right now the only “glitch” I’ve come across seems to be that if I press the “DVD Menu” button or the “1” button on my MCE remote, it turns the TV off which must have something to do with the IR frequency the TV works off of, but I haven’t called Microsoft yet to ask about it. Another enhancement I’d like to see is the ability to delete extra time at the beginning and end of shows that MCE might record that I don’t necessarily want to have to keep. My brother-in-law works on the Geek Squad at BestBuy and also praises MCE computer functionality. Personally I think if anyone is looking to purchase a new computer, go with a MCE – ultimately it’s worth it.
Deborah Miller – MCE allows you to reduce the time prestart and lag. I have my set for 2 min before and after. For specific shows I have to manually change it to ensure I get the whole thing (like football games and other live shows).
Ed Bott – I just ran across your review and forwarded the links to some friends at work. I have the MCE and it is fantastic! Absolutely love the device and it sits in my living room. I was able to swap out all the other devices I had cluttering up my wall unit (FM receiver, CD player, DVD player, etc). All these are gone and a single HP MCE is sitting there. Looks great and never crashes (of course I update my windows automatically and have advanced firewalls installed).
MCE is the way to go!
Interesting thread and I think the competition between the two systems is forcing them both to improve. One really great feature recently added to the Tivo is the ability to “Clip” the start or end of a program when the network (mostly ABC) purposely schedules a program to start at 9:59 or end at 10:01. This very annoying tactic creates conflicts between shows that would not normally exist. Does anyone know if or when MCE will offer this feature?
I have a MCE 2005 and just got Time Warner DTV. I have ran into a problem and haven’t found a solution. I got MCE configured to change channels on the Digital Set-top box. That works great, my MCE remote chnages the channels on the TW set-top box. Now the PROBLEM is when I switch to say, channel 300 (HBO-East, I can watch it for about1 minute. Then I get a screen saying, “The orginator or provider does not allow playback of this content”. Now that not the exact words, but close. I called my provider and they had no clue, but I am wondering if you have to have there DVR to watch those channels. I would almost bet it would happen using a Tivo. Is there a MCE Tweak to fix that?
Great article by the way.
Regards,
MD
I’m with Deborah: the added cost of a telephone land line just so I can install TiVo makes it a no-go for me. Why wasn’t this mentioned earlier? A lot of people I know are going with mobile-only phone service and TiVo is going to need to provide a way around requiring it at all. ReplayTV is too unreliable, both in terms of hardware and company, to consider. This leaves cable company boxes (a no-go for me due to the inability to record On Demand content), MCE, DIY, or unreliable 3rd-party solutions. Guess what looks more and more appealing? I don’t want to wrestle with linux installs and drivers just to get a DVR/PVR set up, so M$ looks like the only option still standing.
I’ve been reading several sites now for a couple of days trying to find out some information on remote control of a SA8300 from another room. With all the esoteric complexities that solved on these forums, I guess this must fall under the category of “too elementary to mention”. My cable company (Time Warner) knows less than than I do about this subject if that’s possible, and that is scary. I tried a Remote Control Extender by Jensen (JDSC-IR100A) must not speak its language. I’m almost ready to break down and pay another monthly fee for a second 8300. Any help will be appreciated.
In reply to Arthur: Go to Radio Shack to get a Remote Control Extender. I use one with my SA8300. All the unit does is wirelessly transmit the IR signal from your remote to a receiver in the other room. You must attach an emitter from the receiver to the front of the SA8300. They can explain further at Radio Shack. The extender I purchased also feeds audo and video back from the receiver to the transmitter (so the audio output of the SA8300 can be connected to a stereo located near the transmitter if desired)
Thank you to all the ReplayTV posters. We can’t forget one of the earliest – and still one of the best – PVRs out there. Certainly, they’re no longer being manufactured but you can still buy them and they provide features comparible to Tivo (years before Tivo had them).
Networking: Allows you to use multiple PVRs (expanding your disk space)
Commercial Advance: Avoids the need for 30 second skip. How many times to I hit the 30 second skip button? It doesn’t matter on the ReplayTV. I just immediately jumps to the end of the commercial block seamlessly!
Incremental Jumps: This is one of my favorite features I have yet to see on another PVR (although my experience with Tivo is limited). Essentially, hit a number and the back button (or forward button) and it’ll jump that many minutes forward (or backwards). Did you start watching a 90 minute program, stop in the middle, and then accidently start watching at the beginning again? Just hit 45 and forward and you instantly jump 45 minutes forward. Too far? Hit 1 and backward and you jump back one minute. (just as an example)
Smart Recording: It means that, sure, you can set a “season pass”, or you can just tell your ReplayTV to record episodes only at 7pm or every Tuesday at 9pm. And it’s even smart enough to catch if the show starts early or late.
Sadly, I’ve upgraded to HDTV and my ReplayTVs are going bye-bye. I’m traded functionality for features (I’m using a Comcast Motorola PVR). But I suspect this will only be a temporary trade-off until Windows Vista. Frankly, I got used to not having to hit a button when commercials came on the air and I want to go back to that functionality. Hey, networks, do you want to advertise on my TV? Then pay the PVR company to splash ads on the screen whenever I hit pause. ReplayTV did that one, too. Tivo copied everything else, why not copy this?
Michael with the skip problem: wondering if you have a multi-core PC.
I have the same problem, more or less – skipping gets progressively more out of whack.
Seems to only be since going dual core. Also wondering if Intervideo codec (windvd) might be related/part of the problem.
Any commonalities are possibly important!
For what it’s worth, the HD TiVo is now down to $300 (I got it for this flat price from a no-rebate deal on Ebay), BUT, it seems to have perfectly awful ATSC tuners – lots of dropouts! Also, it runs a 2003 (or so) version of TiVo software that’s really really slow and lacks some of the new features.
–Gary
My wife wanted a DVR so I figured it was time to try and build a media center. With the Vista free download I bought a HDTV tuner card from ATI w/ remote and HD antenna, dual core processor, and now have a great entertainment machine. Cost about $800 total to build buit I have both an entertaiment center and a kick-but machine.
So I figured it is better to invest in hardware that I could upgrade and have total control over not to mention the 15 free HD channels I receive now. I am cancelling that damn cable and moving to no monthly fees.
Using Windows Movie Maker I can recompress the recorded shows for archiving. Cuts them to 1/10 the size. Can’t wait for the SuperBowl, darn Seahawks… :o(
TomT