The Roamio isn’t TiVo’s only summer set-top launch, as Evolution Digital DTAs featuring the TiVo UI are now being made available to cable partners. This particular, diminutive DTA is HD-capable and the lower cost hardware can obviously be loaded up with TiVo — enabling operators to deliver a consistent experience to secondary televisions. Features of this DVR-less TiVo:
- Grid Guide and Mini-Guide with 16-20 hours of data
- Channel Banner
- Operator UI branding
- What to Watch (recommended shows)
- Upsell promotions
- Field Software Updates
I heard a rumor that this isn’t even a TiVo project. Evolution hired a bunch of Chinese coders to clone the TiVo “experience” and stuff it into their DTA. Obviously they got TiVo’s blessing on some level, as we’re all very familiar with TiVo’s litigation machine.
So this is a cable box that can not stream from your DVR? It would have to be pretty cheap to take one of these over renting a mini.
Yeah…not being able to view content on a central DVR is a killer for me. Not even useful in a workout room. High-tech rabbit ears.
Just another option for cable providers – not all customers will do whole-home and this is basically a barebones STB – no hub DVR or CableCARD required (thank you FCC?). Would be perfect in my kitchen, where I just want some background noise (and why I’m considering a FiOS DTA for that location).
The decision is, do you invest in DTA’s with IP coming down the pipe? Then in a couple years you have a ton of DTA’s sitting on the shelves.. I’d rather buy the MINI and have that become a future IP standalone set-top..
Dual QAM / IP DTA.. That’s interesting.. HMM someone should recommend that.. :)