I glossed over TiVo’s Suddenlink press release yesterday… which essentially announced another RCN-esque deal, slated to hit towards the end of the year. And my inattentiveness nearly cost me some promising news on possible enhancements to TiVo’s multi-room copying viewing, a feature that’s seriously crippled in many digital cable environments (like mine) and lagging the competition.
Light Reading has the scoop and seems to suggest a MoCA solution could be in the works for cable partner products deployed by RCN and Suddenlink, while traditional home networking would be the “likely” choice for the retail TiVo Premiere. Whichever path(es) they pursue, I hope TiVo also considers streaming content not just DVR to DVR, but DVR to extender. (As Moxi does.) And how about getting it done, with a unified playlist, in 2010?
(Thanks, Alex!)
I hope we see a MoCa/streaming solution sometime soon. The CCI byte has totally killed my TiVoToGo/MRV experience. It’s almost not worth it for me to have two TiVos in my house….
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. Although it sounds like they’re only looking at MoCA for MSOs. Too bad really, because it’s the right solution for probably everyone. We’re hoping to move later this year, and I’ve already been planning a possible TiVo exit strategy to get true whole-home DVR. Hopefully, TiVo has some good (and concrete) news to share sooner rather than later.
If this was a Premiere only kind of thing, and I don’t think it wouldn’t be, I would upgrade. At this point I have no compelling reason to upgrade from our current units. We have a S2, S3, and HD unit and thankfully in our market Comcast only locks down the premium networks; HBO, Showtime, etc.
@Dave Zatz
Some of the other site suggested that Tivo would also be in charge of their non-dvr products as well. To me that says that if they make a non-DVR STB, they are even closer to an extender as well (just remove tuners, cablecard, etc. to reduce price, but use the same software and other hardware). My fingers are crossed that they can trickle at least the extender side down to the TivoHD (I am OK buying a Premiere or other new box for the server side). As much as I like the idea of MOCA, as long as they include an ethernet port I am fine. I just might need to buy another piece of hardware to convert to MOCA, maybe they will offer one of those as a future adapter… (Wireless sucks for me) I continue to dream on however… I know in the end very little will come to fruition.
@xdreamwalker
If you don’t have PLS and are happy with your box Tivo doesn’t really want you to upgrade. They hardly make anything at all on the hardware. (I think they are positive now with the Premiere, but I bet not by much.)
Maybe we all need to start sending or blogging our ideas of what we want in a whole home TiVo so they get it right this time. Well this would of course be assuming they listen.
This raises some interesting possibilities. Imagine a MoCA compatible Tivo DVR coupled with a MoCA compatible Insignia television (an offspring of the recently announced partnership between Tivo & Best Buy).
This may be too little too late… Am I really going to invest the probably around 1000k up front for a 3 room setup like the moxi, plus monthly service unlike, or do I go with a fios /cox/ whoever else multiroom package for 40 bucks a month, get on demand, and not have to worry about the hardware becoming obsolete?
Suddenlink use to have a deal with Tivo for their customers, but it wasn’t that great of a deal $12 a month for Tivo vs $8 for their std hd dvr. It will be interesting how this all roles out and if Suddenlink really gets behind it. In the areas Suddenlink serves they are not the most popular provider. It’s not uncommon to see Dish and DirecTV dishes in front of a majority of the homes.
Is TiVo ever going to release a meaningful new feature? Minor little things, like Netflix streaming, are nice. But, an actual, major, meaningful feature (like a whole home DVR solution) would be nice.
I’m on Comcast so mostly this doesn’t matter to me since they only flag the HBO/Showtime stuff. Sure it means I can’t watch Entourage if I recorded it in the other room, but seriously, I’m just about to pull the trigger and kill HBO anyway. Still, as others have said this needs to get done.
I’m not sure I’ll be buying a new piece of Tivo hardware regardless (two HDs are working fine) unless it has something compelling. MoCA built in would be nice. Whole home DVR would be nice. But seriously, I need to hear something about SDV or VOD access or something from Tivo/FCC before I move probably. Otherwise it could just be money down the drain.