AVS Forum banner

The Official AVS TiVo "Series4" Premiere topic

378K views 4K replies 290 participants last post by  dturturro 
#1 ·
 
#2 ·
I will try to add more to this tonight. Keep in mind that many details are not yet publicly disclosed.
 
#3 ·
Program grid. Any changes?
 
#4 ·
I just pre-ordered two of them. The 320GB uits with Lifetime and 3 year extended warranties for $540 each.


Now as long as I can sell two of my current TiVos with Lifetime and 1TB hard drives for the same price I will be happy.


Is there any data on whether the internal drives can be upgraded and what capacity?


If I can sell my current Lifetime units to cover the cost, I'll get two more Premiere units without the extended warranty and put in larger hard drives.
 
#5 ·
I have a question for those of you who like/use Tivo's. Why did you decide to go the Tivo route? ... Or more specifically, with Ceton's CableCARD tuner coming out at the end of the month, what advantages does the TiVo unit have over a media center system? I'm intrigued by the new TiVo, but it's limited to 2 channels and that I know of, no network sharing of the recordings...


Please let me know! Thanks.
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ckellyusa /forum/post/18247649


I have a question for those of you who like/use Tivo's. Why did you decide to go the Tivo route? ... Or more specifically, with Ceton's CableCARD tuner coming out at the end of the month, what advantages does the TiVo unit have over a media center system? I'm intrigued by the new TiVo, but it's limited to 2 channels and that I know of, no network sharing of the recordings...


Please let me know! Thanks.

There seems to be two types of people: those who like tv based dvr's and those who like computer based, and I fall into the tv based, however I do not have much expperience with media center systems so maybe I don't know what I'm missing.


What I like about tivo is the interface. It is by far the easiest for me and my tech-challenged wife to operate. She can pick up the remote and do anything she needs to, it is very intuitive and it just works.


On the other hand, my downstairs theater dvr is a Motorola from the cable co., it also works well but the interface is very difficult to navigate even for someone experienced, my wife won't even attempt to operate it. The buttons used for fast forward, rewind, and play are too similar to other buttons close by so you have to look at what you are doing and I still get it wrong sometimes. Tivo's only problem is the upfront cost, after that its a no brainer. I am seriously considering getting the Premiere and ditching the Moto the first chance I get.


You are correct in that tivo doesn't support multi-room viewing but for I can overlook that feature, it would be nice but no dealbreaker. Two tuners most of the time are sufficient, other times I utilize both dvr's.
 
#9 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ckellyusa /forum/post/18247649


I have a question for those of you who like/use Tivo's. Why did you decide to go the Tivo route? ... Or more specifically, with Ceton's CableCARD tuner coming out at the end of the month, what advantages does the TiVo unit have over a media center system? I'm intrigued by the new TiVo, but it's limited to 2 channels and that I know of, no network sharing of the recordings...


Please let me know! Thanks.

My 4 year olds can use the TiVo pretty well. My father in law, who has an engineering degree, can't figure out how to use his cable company DVR.
 
#10 ·
I can't imagine there is much practical difference between the XL and the standard unit. The THX cert shouldn't amount to anything.


I hope you can easily swap the HD's on these. Buying the cheaper one and swapping in the larger drive from my S3 would be tempting. I'm anxious to see what these support via e-SATA and internally as well. I'm capped at 2TB now.
 
#11 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by mylan /forum/post/18251181


You are correct in that tivo doesn't support multi-room viewing but for I can overlook that feature, it would be nice but no dealbreaker. Two tuners most of the time are sufficient, other times I utilize both dvr's.

You are incorrect - Tivo does support MRV and transfers to/from PCs for non-protected content. On some cable systems most of the channels are protected (Time Warner, Brighthouse, etc.) and on some they are not (Comcast etc.). Tivo can only MRV content that is not protected because they have to download the show to another box - that is subject to change with the new DVRs because they may be able to implement a protected streaming method which would allow all content to be MRV'd. They cannot do that with the older hardware because it cannot (apparently) stream fast enough at the highest HD bitrates.
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by slowbiscuit /forum/post/18253895


You are incorrect - Tivo does support MRV and transfers to/from PCs for non-protected content. On some cable systems most of the channels are protected (Time Warner, Brighthouse, etc.) and on some they are not (Comcast etc.). Tivo can only MRV content that is not protected because they have to download the show to another box - that is subject to change with the new DVRs because they may be able to implement a protected streaming method which would allow all content to be MRV'd. They cannot do that with the older hardware because it cannot (apparently) stream fast enough at the highest HD bitrates.

I don't think that's true. I almost always transfer faster than real time
 
#13 ·
I'm liking what I've seen so far. Never had TiVo before, but I've always been interested. As FiOS user, I'm admittedly less 'in need' of a TiVo then when I had cable (8300 was a pile of crap). The FiOS Media DVR is actually fairly decent. Has a few annoying quirks, but is better than most.




Regardless, I will likely jump on board depending on a few things:

* Streaming between boxes - Sounds like they probably will which is a good sign. Having had it with my DVR (can stream to any FiOS box on the network) ... it really is hard to live without. The fact FiOS works over my coaxial network (MoCA) makes it more convenient, but I'm planning on Ethernet distribution anyway. Or am I wrong, and TiVo supports coax distribution?

* Support for FiOS VOD - I had read that the VOD FiOS is (or already did?) switching to may even be implementable on series 3 TiVo. Either way, it again is a feature that I'm not sure I can give up. Granted, I could always keep a standard HD box from Verizon, but it would be nice to consolidate.

* Price discount for multiple boxes - Assuming the streaming occurs (technically, I'm not sure what Verizon copy-protects, but I assume premium channels at least are - so transferring may not be enough), I'll need to see what sort of discount you get for extra boxes.


To be honest, I kind of wish TiVo offered a cheaper non-HDD model for streaming/TV watching. Kind of like my current set up.

* Native output - I see no reason why they would suddenly change, but you never know. I have dedicated video processing, so it's obviously something I would like - and I'm pissed the FiOS DVR doesn't support it.




I will be keeping an eye on how this product progresses.
 
#14 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT /forum/post/18255470


I'm liking what I've seen so far. Never had TiVo before, but I've always been interested. As FiOS user, I'm admittedly less 'in need' of a TiVo then when I had cable (8300 was a pile of crap). The FiOS Media DVR is actually fairly decent. Has a few annoying quirks, but is better than most.




Regardless, I will likely jump on board depending on a few things:

* Streaming between boxes - Sounds like they probably will which is a good sign. Having had it with my DVR (can stream to any FiOS box on the network) ... it really is hard to live without. The fact FiOS works over my coaxial network (MoCA) makes it more convenient, but I'm planning on Ethernet distribution anyway. Or am I wrong, and TiVo supports coax distribution?

* Support for FiOS VOD - I had read that the VOD FiOS is (or already did?) switching to may even be implementable on series 3 TiVo. Either way, it again is a feature that I'm not sure I can give up. Granted, I could always keep a standard HD box from Verizon, but it would be nice to consolidate.

* Price discount for multiple boxes - Assuming the streaming occurs (technically, I'm not sure what Verizon copy-protects, but I assume premium channels at least are - so transferring may not be enough), I'll need to see what sort of discount you get for extra boxes.


To be honest, I kind of wish TiVo offered a cheaper non-HDD model for streaming/TV watching. Kind of like my current set up.

* Native output - I see no reason why they would suddenly change, but you never know. I have dedicated video processing, so it's obviously something I would like - and I'm pissed the FiOS DVR doesn't support it.




I will be keeping an eye on how this product progresses.

Tivo allows transfers, not streaming. It copies the show to your other Tivo, but you can start watching right away.


Doesn't support MoCA. Doesn't support any cable VOD services (no 2way, and that's the cable Co's fault).


No price discount on box purchase, but you get a cheaper rate per month for each additional box.


TivoHD allows native output, and Premiere will I assume as well.
 
#15 ·
Why would you get the premiere? For $200 you get a backlit remote, a 1TB internal drive and THX. That's it. You can get an external 1TB drive for much less than $200, not to mention the possibility of swapping an internal drive. The THX means nothing, and the remote I could certainly live without, not to mention many users have a Harmony or similiar custom remote.


IMO, if they included wifi and remote streaming capability(like a slingbox) it would be worth the upgrade.
 
#16 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT /forum/post/18255470


I'm liking what I've seen so far. Never had TiVo before, but I've always been interested. As FiOS user, I'm admittedly less 'in need' of a TiVo then when I had cable (8300 was a pile of crap). The FiOS Media DVR is actually fairly decent. Has a few annoying quirks, but is better than most.




Regardless, I will likely jump on board depending on a few things:

* Streaming between boxes - Sounds like they probably will which is a good sign. Having had it with my DVR (can stream to any FiOS box on the network) ... it really is hard to live without. The fact FiOS works over my coaxial network (MoCA) makes it more convenient, but I'm planning on Ethernet distribution anyway. Or am I wrong, and TiVo supports coax distribution?

* Support for FiOS VOD - I had read that the VOD FiOS is (or already did?) switching to may even be implementable on series 3 TiVo. Either way, it again is a feature that I'm not sure I can give up. Granted, I could always keep a standard HD box from Verizon, but it would be nice to consolidate.

* Price discount for multiple boxes - Assuming the streaming occurs (technically, I'm not sure what Verizon copy-protects, but I assume premium channels at least are - so transferring may not be enough), I'll need to see what sort of discount you get for extra boxes.


To be honest, I kind of wish TiVo offered a cheaper non-HDD model for streaming/TV watching. Kind of like my current set up.

* Native output - I see no reason why they would suddenly change, but you never know. I have dedicated video processing, so it's obviously something I would like - and I'm pissed the FiOS DVR doesn't support it.




I will be keeping an eye on how this product progresses.


Also take a look at Moxi, It has some of the features you're looking for.
 
#17 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ckellyusa /forum/post/18247649


I have a question for those of you who like/use Tivo's. Why did you decide to go the Tivo route? ... Or more specifically, with Ceton's CableCARD tuner coming out at the end of the month, what advantages does the TiVo unit have over a media center system? I'm intrigued by the new TiVo, but it's limited to 2 channels and that I know of, no network sharing of the recordings...


Please let me know! Thanks.

Having just recently switched from my old Tivo DirecTV HD10 receiver to a Home Theatre PC, I might be able to shed some light - at least on the comparison btw Tivo and HTPC.


For one thing, while both the Boxee and Hulu apps for the HTPC look interesting, they're both relatively new and one or both still calls itself "beta." Either way, though, they're both QUITE buggy. It's also impossible to jump ahead in the commercials with these services. In fact, trying to do so can cause problems. I've had to restart videos from the beginning because the player got confused and I've had the audio from the commercial and the video playing simultaneously.


Even if these problems were fixed, though, availability of content on Boxee and Hulu is unpredictable at best. The withdrawal of Comedy Central from Hulu recently was widely reported. Plus, I notice a couple of shows I watch like Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother haven't been updated in a couple of weeks - despite the fact that both seem to be promoted heavily in online services [note: I noticed CBS seems to have stopped updating them on cbs.com for now, too].


I've also had quite a bit of difficulty playing DVDs using Boxee.


Windows Media Center seems more mature and therefore less buggy than the above applications. If you have a tuner card in your HTPC, you can also record and play videos with WMC similar to a DVR. Boxee and Hulu don't support recorded video.


On the other hand, WMC doesn't have the kind of extensibility available with Boxee. I like the application links in Boxee and services like Pandora or Last.fm seem useful. WMC can't do this.


But where everything shows itself as inferior to Tivo is in the day-to-day user experience. Tivo consistently works the way I expect it to, letting me focus on my viewing experience without thinking about my media player. If I took the time to be methodical about it, I could probably write up a few dozen features that work better in Tivo than in WMC. Here are a couple of examples:


1) Even though I have two tuners in my HTPC, there's no way to swap between them. With the Tivo, I might swap between the 10:00 news on one channel and Good Eats on another channel five or six times in an hour (thereby avoiding commercials, even though I'm "caught up" with the recording time). Swapping from one tuner to the other with the Tivo involved a quick sequence of a) Pause current, b) Swap tuners, and c) Play new.


To accomplish that use case with WMC, I would have to press Record the first time I land on each program - WMC doesn't have a notion of buffering video that you haven't explicitly set to record. Then, at each swap, I have to Pause, then go to the Recorded TV menu and reselect the alternate program and select Play from the menu. At the end, I need to delete both programs because they were stored on the hard drive, not just temporarily buffered like on the Tivo. Menus and increased button presses make the transition much more disruptive.


2) Let's say you record a program that runs from 8:00 to 8:30. You don't have any other recordings scheduled that evening for either tuner. At 8:20, you go to your recorded items list and start watching your recorded program from the beginning. At about 8:42, you've finished watching your 30 minute program (only about 22 minutes because you skipped commercials), and you decide you'll just keep watching what comes on next.


On the Tivo, this works great. Just keep watching. The Tivo will have already buffered the first 12 minutes of your next show so you can conveniently jump ahead when you want. Ahh. Very nice.


With WMC, you've already missed the first 12 minutes of the next program. Despite the fact that you haven't asked either tuner to record anything, they haven't bothered to do anything useful with their spare time.


I could go on. In short, though, Tivo has done an excellent job with their UI design. It's very thoughtfully done making for a great user experience. I don't think anyone can compete with Tivo on this front.


And despite the fact that I spent about $900 (all in) building the HTPC, I'm thinking about demoting it to an ordinary home PC and switching to one of these new Tivos.
 
#19 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawn Gordon /forum/post/18247348


Program grid. Any changes?

In the interview linked above, TiVo said it has not yet updated every aspect of the interface in HD, but is working on that now. LiveTV (i.e. EPG) and wishlists were given as examples of features now being redone in HD. There are no screenshots yet. We still don't know how much of the HDUI will ship in April.

Quote:
Originally Posted by b_scott /forum/post/18254715


I don't think that's true. I almost always transfer faster than real time

The older TiVo Series3 can always transfer in realtime, with throughput of 25+Mbps. The TiVo HD has less memory bandwidth (refer to second chart) which reduces throughput to 16-24Mbps, depending on what is being done with the DVR. That allows real-time transfer and viewing for content compressed by broadcasters and cable providers at
 
#21 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak3883 /forum/post/18255788


Why would you get the premiere? For $200 you get a backlit remote, a 1TB internal drive and THX. That's it. You can get an external 1TB drive for much less than $200, not to mention the possibility of swapping an internal drive. The THX means nothing, and the remote I could certainly live without, not to mention many users have a Harmony or similiar custom remote.


IMO, if they included wifi and remote streaming capability(like a slingbox) it would be worth the upgrade.

It really isn't that much of a difference. An internal drive is about $90, but I'm assuming you'd have to wait for WinMFS to be made compatible with the Premiere (I could be wrong about that, though). Also, if you're like me and have a laptop, you'll need to buy two SATA enclosures, which are another $30 each. The remote can always be sold. Just a few weeks ago, I sold my used Glo remote for $40; the one that comes with the Premiere XL will likely fetch more than that. The THX certification doesn't really mean anything to me.


However, I must admit that a major reason behind my purchase (besides them offering lifetime for $200) was that I didn't have to pay for it myself. I'm content with my TiVo HD. I just upgraded the hard drive to 1TB like two weeks ago, and it already does everything I want it to. I just like having new stuff.
 
#22 ·
Is the premiere going to let me use other eSATA drives besides the "My DVR Expander"? I already have the WD15EADS/ThermaltakeN0012US, that i've been using with my D* HR20, but we will be leaving D* soon for Fios and hopefully I can use this or just replace the internal drive if need be. Will TiVo2go still be an option on this interface?
 
#23 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by HDMI Guy /forum/post/18258553


This may have been covered but I didn't see it. I have Time Warner cable and Netflix. When I do a search can I just search cable and Netlix and not Amazon, Utube, etc....?

Yes. In settings, you can select what content providers you want to appear in results with cable / OTA programs. You can remove them all, or you can select just Netflix.


I updated the first post to reflect that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by leftyguitar1963 /forum/post/18259508


Is the premiere going to let me use other eSATA drives besides the "My DVR Expander"?

Unknown.

Quote:
Originally Posted by leftyguitar1963 /forum/post/18259508


Will TiVo2go still be an option on this interface?

Yes. It should be much faster, too.
 
#26 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Tomaskovic /forum/post/18260424


Can I xfer my lifetime subscription from a current model if I buy a premiere?

Existing TiVo owners with a monthly/yearly subscription receive a 20% discount on the Premiere at TiVo.com, with new units priced at $239 and $399. Customers with lifetime service can also add lifetime to the Premiere at a 50% discount ($199) without affecting service on their existing DVR. Only one discount is available per customer per box, so you can't combine a 20% discount on the box with the 50% discount on lifetime.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top