While I predicted significant Moxi HD DVR price cuts after Arris’ acquisition of Digeo, I expected to see them come as the new parent company retreated from retail. However… Not only isn’t Arris giving up on direct consumer sales, versus exclusively pitching hardware to the MSOs, they’re pushing forward with the introduction of a new Moxi HD DVR model containing three tuners. Additionally, the Moxi Mate extenders will overcome their biggest limitation later this fall when they’ll begin receiving streamed live television (on top of the existing DVR recordings). Here’s a breakdown of the updated pricing from the conference call:
Ben Drawbaugh (EngadgetHD) and I agree that Arris still needs to tighten up the Moxi UI and we’d both like to see ATSC OTA tuning, but $1000 (no monthly fees) for three rooms of ad-free Moxi-controlled digital cable is a reasonable deal. Especially in light of TiVo multi-room viewing being dead to me – given their current technical implementation. It’s more economical and less disruptive to replace my DVR than it is to replace my home. Perhaps TiVo’s upcoming access point will ease my pain, but if improvement isn’t seen in the next few months we’re moving on to a Windows Media Center (with Ceton?) or Moxi whole-home DVR solution.
Click to enlarge:
Wow a triple tuner, that’s the sweet spot for us. There’s times when our dual tuner Motorola DCX3400 is occupied but yet we want to watch a third program, so we have to schedule it so whatever we watch live is on Clear QAM. Fortunately it’s one of the networks like ABC,CBS,NBC,FOX, etc… so it’s not too bad.
Triple tuner FTW!
I have to say that three rooms for $999 had me thinking twice, but I need at least four tuners and sometimes five. Although I don’t need five enough that I’d pay much extra for it as there is probably only one or two times a year that I’d actually use the fifth tuner.
But yeah, the UI still sucks and is the real reason I’d never switch to Moxi full time. I’m just not down with the Live TV focus and wasted space on the cross bar based UI.
Man do I wish someone would take Windows Media Center and turn it into an embedded device.
Being able to stream to multiple rooms and watch live tv without paying for additional cable cards or “digital outlets” is a (big?) cost saver over Tivo. Can u pause the live streaming? Can you stream a partially recorded program as it continues to be recorded? Very interesting.
The latest update from Moxi also had me rethink my current DVR implementation even though it consists of two TivoHDs with lifetime subscriptions. The one drawback that will prevent me from leaving Tivo right now is the apparent inability to move recorded shows from the Moxi DVR to one’s PC. So, for now, the Tivo HDs stay put.
today is the last day to enter Moxi New Year’s Rewind and Unwind Sweepstakes
Read the multi-step process here http://wp.me/py8PO-nt
I’ve spent the last 5 hours playing with my new 3-Tuner Moxi. I’ve owned both Tivo and Motorola DVRs and I was awaiting this unit like a kid staying up the night before Christmas. Sadly, I must say the user experience with this unit is the worst of the worst. I like the T-bar-PS3-esque navigation idea, but the implementation fails miserably. Worse than miserably. Any 17 year old kid learning basic programming skills could out program the people responsible for this UI. The remote is sending the commands and the Moxi ignores 90% of them. Pausing playback, trying to navigate, trying to enter letters for the search field, trying to go into and out of menus etc. are all far too painful. I have almost thrown the unit out the window countless times today.
– slow forward, but no slow reverse.
– no frame by frame in either direction.
– programmable forward jump, but only via their 4 options of 30sec, 3min, 5min, 15min. How about “from 30sec to 15min in 30 sec increments.” ?
– programmable forward jump, but no programmable backwards jump
– When scheduling series recordings, it CONSTANTLY tells me that some other series will NOT be recorded A MONTH from now because I “don’t have the hard drive space.” I guess it’s trying to tell me that it “thinks” I won’t have hard drive space in a month. That has to be the dumbest warning ever. I have an empty 500GB hard drive, 0% full at the moment, yet The Daily Show or Colbert Report will not be recorded 30 days from now. WTF? It should warn me of shows not being recorded maybe a week before… not a month… and surely not when I have an empty 500GB hard drive. “The sky is falling” warnings are useless. Would probably be a better user experience to use those CPU cycles to tell me “Your Moxi won’t be responding to 90% of your remote commands TODAY.”