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.