DVR marketing ridiculousness continues…
First Verizon introduced FiOS Quantum DVR, touting a whopping 12 tuners for recording or feeding extenders throughout the home for live viewing. With the small caveat that two 6-tuner DVR rentals are required. Well, Comcast has upped the ante with a Gillette-worthy 15 tuner Xfinity X1 experience. Assuming you rent three DVRs (and pay the associated additional outlet fees).
Comcast, which has been touting the expanded digital video recorder in local TV ads and Internet promotions of X1, confirmed that it recently began to pilot the new option in its 14-state Northeast region, which includes systems serving parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
Collaborative scheduling and recording surely is a nice perk but, given the breadth of Internet and on-demand content, I wonder how many tuners the average household really needs? We’ve been making do with a single 4-tuner TiVo the last year (since replacing the other DVRs with Minis). It’s sufficient most of the time, although we occasionally experience conflict and would benefit from an additional tuner or two to feed the extenders and hit all scheduled recordings.
if you need more than 4 DVRs you are watching way to much TV
I can’t imagine ever wanting to see more then 3 things at the same time on tv and that includes sports. 16? I would never be able to find 16 shows in a day I want to watch never mind at once
Wow, and I thought eleven was as high as it could go!
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes
LOL I love the gillete worthy comment.
Love Bryan10024’s post as well!
I dont see a need for all these tuners. I would suppose adding DVR’s for Hard Drive capacity. Whats in these, 500GB or 1TB? Cable is still MPEG2 also. My provider just came out with Arris 6 tuner gateway. Now its only 500gb hard drive recording MPEG2, so that is where the Achilles heel is. They advertise you can add a hard drive to the eSATA port to expand the moxi storage space… but that is something you have to purchase and provide.
Going MPEG4 would not only save bandwidth, but also improve efficiencies recording onto the hard drive.
“I can’t imagine ever wanting to see more then 3 things at the same time on tv and that includes sports. 16? I would never be able to find 16 shows in a day I want to watch never mind at once”
You forget the apocalypse. I’d want 32 tuners to record the apocalypse. It’ll all be live, and as Gil Scott-Heron has informed us, the apocalypse will be televised. So Comcast is falling down here by only offering 15 tuners. The apocalypse plus sports will certainly require more than 15 tuners.
I would think 6 tuners is the sweet spot for most homes. However, one has to keep in mind that if one access the DVR remotely, like a built in Sling type tech, it would require a tuner to view live TV, ideally, using an unused tuner and the more tuners the greater likelihood of not interrupting someone’s viewing experience at home or cancelling another person’s timed recording. If TV everywhere for a large family is the future, than I could see MORE than 6 tuners being needed. However, I am with the majority here, finding 15 tuners just about overkill. These 12 and 15 tuner systems from the MSO’s that require additional DVR’s may just be a way getting subscribers to take those extra DVR’s for a perceived benefit that would reap the MSO’s more in fees.
I am recording six concurrent shows pretty much daily with my Roamio Pro. But I record a lot of content. I don’t watch anywhere near all of it. Maybe 20% at most. But I want a wide variety of content to choose from when I sit down to watch TV.
The problem with having all the extra boxes from the cable comapny is that each box incurs another monthly fee. I thought the comcast box had six tuners but they were only using five. Why haven’t they enabled the six tuner for use? Then they could offer 12 tuners with two boxes like FiOS.
We have the standard two tuner FIOS DVR and while four, six, or 15 tuners may have been useful five years ago, we have no desire to upgrade now.
I’m a former Comcast customer who moved to Verizon’s multiroom system and also have a premio tivo. I can record 8 shows and watch others or recordings on the satellite boxes. Obviously recording capacity can be provided with current technology, but I really have a problem with the ad!!! Comcast, in my several years of experience has never even supported a PIP system that allows viewing 2 shows at once. How do they propose you can watch 15 shows at once????