The Other TiVos
from the a-big-brand-or-a-historical-footnote? dept
TiVo may have a brand that marketers dream about, but it hasn't helped them sign up too many customers. In fact, they're not even the leading digital video recorder seller. That distinction goes to EchoStar which offers a generic DVR service with their satellite TV offering. Now, more and more companies are offering their own generic DVRs in many different formats. There are PCs that double as DVRs. There are set top boxes and DVD players that have DVR functionality as well. Most of these use their own solutions - even as TiVo is trying to license their solution to other box makers. The thing that I wonder, though, is how many non-TiVo DVR users still refer to their device as a "TiVo"?
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tivo
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I've got one of these
I got the 508 model which records 60 hours of shows, and it's seldom that I have more than 10 free hours of space on the system.
Plus it has built in Caller ID, which is pretty nice to help avoid those telemarketers...
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TiVo
I'm looking at the MythTV project (http://ww.mythtv.org) for an overpriced but highly-versatile TiVO, and yes, I will call it a TiVo regardless as to what it really is, for the same reason mentioned above: people know 'TiVo', but they don't know 'PVR'.
In a perfect world, consumers wouldn't be so apathetic, and the least underhanded company would be the best one. TiVo uses Linux (saves money), is very open to hackers home-brewing add-ons, is a very capable box and is reasonably priced (imho). Would that they were a bit more open and a bit less under-handed with their downloading of sponsored content, I'd be a fast and firm convert. As it is, and because I need a residential gateway and fileserver, it'll probably be a super-quiet (http://www.quietpc.com) system with two TV Cards for me.
Now if only AT&T Broadband Cable could figure out that people do like taping one show (or two) while watching another, but unfortunately there's no decent Cable-TV provider out here; just AT&T and their pathetically bad digital cable set-up.
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