EchoStar continues to pitch US cable providers with a higher end set-top box solution. The company, generally known for its satellite television technology, first unveiled a CableCARD-powered tru2way DVR with Slingbox capabilities back in 2009. Despite what appears to be limited interest and uptake, EchoStar presses on and announced the Aria initiative earlier this summer. Amongst other elements, the Aria ecosystem consists of three cable box options … and a variant (DE52) of the top tier unit (HC–620DRS) may have just passed through the FCC. From the filing:
The Delta Cable box is an in home set top designed to be connected to a Tier 2 cable system and provide QAM, True 2-way, MoCa, Out of Band, and DOCSIS support. The set top box provides various A/V outputs along with Ethernet and USB I/O. The set top box is equipped with an internal hard drive for DVR functionality. It also has a daughter card built in which allows for content place shifting.
Am I the only one to see this as a huge change in the DVR landscape? It looks as though TiVo finally has some decent competition.
This probably isn’t intended for retail… they’re targeting midsize cable operators according the filing (and based on their presence at events like The Cable Show). If anything, TiVo’s proven there’s no money to be made from retail CableCARD DVRs.
Dave,
When I enlarge the pictures for this and flip through the album it continues into the Insignia Connected TV pictures as well. I assume that wasn’t intended.
There’s been some inconsistency with the plugin I use for those zoom/overlay effects. Thumbnails in a row are using the WordPress gallery feature and should be locked to just each and it seems to operate that way most of the time. Inline images like the header or that inline Aria link often get prev/next buttons that link unrelated images in the library. The bottom line – yeah, it’s not the behavior I was looking for but I’m dependent on the plugin author to fix it. I could seek out another plugin or go back to the old style of individual pages per picture, but this is probably the best compromise in terms of time and performance. I’m hopeful that one day the WordPress dev team spends more time on user facing content improvements, like photos, over a continual prettying up of the admin panel which they seem obsessed with.
“SlingLoaded” so basically it’s going to look like a vip 922 in operation. Good because the software on cable DVR’s is atrocious
1. No Firewire
2. No eSATA or USB 3.0 external HD support
HDGuy:
Good observations. It most likely keeps the price lower to manufacture and more attractive to MSO’s. Considering Echostar does have the best external HDD solution of all–currently available only on Dish–it probably would have had a hard time extending it agreements for it to MSO’s.
Also, Echostar may feel that the era of external HDD’s to increase capacity and its associated costs is becoming anachronistic in the blooming streaming world or ours that pretty much provides the same feature: additional programming on demand.
What a crock. CableCard was suppose to empower the end user of calbe tv. Instead, the powers that be have made it difficult for Tivo and Moxi (RIP ReplayTV). My Moxi purchase is paid now in savings froma reduced monthly cable bill, but if the end user takes it one more time in the arse I will get rid of my cable service and watch what I can online.