TiVo’s been telegraphing this move for nearly a year, not to mention a few good leaks, so it should come as no surprise that they’re (sort of) announcing the components of their whole home DVR solution: a quad-tuner TiVo “Premiere Q” and the non-DVR “TiVo Preview.” However, the reason I say sort of is that the news comes from a single source and hasn’t been corroborated anywhere else. Yet, it all sounds legit. And we know The Cable Show gets going in Chicago this week. So it’s most likely a case of premature coverage, rather than a forgery of some sort.
TiVo Premiere Q is the company’s first quad-tuner gateway set-top box, a higher-end option than its flagship Premiere dual-tuner digital video recorder. In addition, TiVo is rolling out Preview, its first non-DVR HD set-top box. RCN will be the first U.S. cable operator to offer subscribers the Premiere Q and Preview, in addition to its current TiVo Premiere offering, later this year. Suddenlink Communications also expects to offer the new boxes at some point.
The story goes on to say these new units stream content box-to-box locally via MoCA, versus the retail Premiere’s traditional wired or wireless networking. Again, no surprises.