The new Series 3 HD Tivos are out. This is now better than the Tivo/DirecTV combos, even the HD one. And with DirecTV trying to move away from Tivo, it is time to move. Unfortunately the fake cable company here at the current apartment is really just a redistibution of Dish Network, so it doesn’t support Cable Card and this won’t work with it. Not to mention until the house finishes selling there still isn’t money for such things. But after next time we move maybe… not sure it ranks with all the other things to spend money on though. It may still wait awhile. I’m thinking a 3rd SD DirecTivo might happen first. So that each of us can have our own. I want to hook mine up to a Slingbox (with no TV) so I can just watch on my computer. The Mac client is due out in public beta within a month or so. Or perhaps a StreetPilot 2820. I am really feeling the lack of one. When I came to Seattle I left mine in Florida because it had a big yellow spot in the middle, plus I didn’t know where all the stuff was I needed to load Seattle maps. Now it is in a box in storage somewhere even if I knew where the other stuff was. And it had that big yellow spot that made it difficult to use. and the new one is sweet. Or a computer for Amy. Or new cars. Or many other things.
Oh well. For now, all such things still wait.
I just ordered today the new HD directv tivo with the 5lnb dish. I had the HD tivo with directv and to be quite honest that was bliss. During the last 15 months I have been living in a rental which I could not get directv succesfully installed, but my new home will have directv. I have used the new directv interface since I installed two non-tivo hd directv receivers on our yacht, and I liked it directv has really worked on polishing that interface. I will let you know how it goes with the DVR. I currently have a motorola cable HD DVR box at home and this thing is a joke it’s so awful I can’t say enough bad things about it. My wife is a non-techie and abosultely hates this piece of shit and damn’s every day we have spent without our HD Directivo. I will update our progress.
I presume you mistyped, since there is no “new” HD DirecTV Tivo, just their new DirecTV non-Tivo DVR. You can still get the real HD DirecTivos, but they stopped manufacturing them, so you won’t be able to forever.
You actually liked the DirecTV non-Tivo DVR interface? All the reviews I have read of it have basically said that if you never had a Tivo you would think it was wonderful just cause it is a DVR, but if you had previously owned a Tivo, you would think of it as a step down. Having said that, I have also heard that they have been making great improvements to it. Just that Tivo is still better.
As for me, I have DirecTV because it was the best Tivo experience with the dual tuners and all. Even when the stand alone Tivos added all sorts of new features, the DirecTivos still trumped it because of the dual tuners. But now, there is an HD Tivo that has dual tuners and a bunch of the new features to boot (although not MRV yet). And DirecTV while still supporting the old DirecTivos is clearly trying to move people away from them and new ones aren’t being made any more… so a move back to cable may be in my future so I can get the best DVR experience, which is no longer DirecTV with a Tivo as of a few days ago.
Tivo is the ONLY reason I ever got DirecTV. That reason is no longer a major differentiator for me.
Well I don’t like calling the damn thing a DVR. Yeah it’s not tivo dvr tech. I have used the directv interface non-dvr and it’s nice. However have not tried with the DVR. Tivo is a great feature of directv, I just despise cable so much, that even loosing tivo can’t make me stay with their crappy service, awful video quality, etc…
Let me know how the non-Tivo DVR works out for you. :-) If I do end up staying DirecTV and going HD, I’d still end up going with the (still available)HD DirecTivo until they have things I really want and can’t get another way on the MPEG4 streams. BUt Cable may be a very active option if next time we move we move to an area where we can get cable card.
I can understand the crappy service part, but on the video quality side, isn’t it pretty much comparable if you compare digital cable (rather than analog) to DirecTV?
The video quality of directv is still far superior to cable because cable still transmits a vast amount of channels in non-digital form, even with digital cable, and even in digital to digital comparisons, say HBO digital non hd from dtv to cable digital I still see a lot more compression being used in digital cable which leads to alot of artifacts on screen, it’s utterly annoying. Mpeg 4 as far as I can tell for directv is only necessary for HD locals, that’s it. The old HD directivos can pick up the hd locals off air and you get everything else, I still think that’s the best machine. This damn new machine from directv really truly sucks compared to the HD directivo.
I’ve heard the video quality thing varies a lot from place to place, even within the same Cable company. Most cable companies are in thew process of phasing out the analog and putting all their channels on the digital tier, but most are far from done. Again though, it varies a lot by company and by location. But I take your comparisons of digital to digital at face value.
Yeah, MPEG4 will only be needed for HD Locals (so far) and right now is not even needed for many of them. And the DirecTivo does get OTA HD, but I most likely will not be in a place where I can do much with an OTA antenna, so might need to get HD locals from whatever provider I get. Dunno. Once we’ve moved again to somewhere more permanent we’ll check out the options.
I think there are some Tivo Series 3 features that aren’t in the DirecTivo, but they aren’t what I would call “core” features that would make or break anything for me… more like extras.
The new DirecTV machine sucks huh? Going to switch back to a real DirecTivo? Although it is getting harder, it is still possible to get them…