Interesting News Dave Hasn’t Covered

Never enough time… Video of SlingPlayer (10fps?) on Motorola Q. (Mobileburn) Dell to announce home media product today? (PVRWire) IPTV over WiFi. (CNET) Macrovision inks deal to put ACP in AACS. (HDBeat) Bloggers are journalists, protected by First Amendment. (MacWorld)

Interesting News Dave Hasn’t Covered

Never enough time… One man’s experience with the MPEG-4 decoding Dish ViP622 HD DVR. (Extreme Tech) MSOs urged to quickly enter portable media market. (Cable Digital News) Wired publishes a static guide of online video services. (Wired) Yahoo unveils tech news and reviews site. (Yahoo) Davis Freeberg breaks down Netflix v. Blockbuster and beats down … Read more

TiVo Series 3 HD Pricing and Timing

TiVo is running an American Idol contest over the next 11 weeks — each week you vote who’s going home. That’s all well and good… but the real interesting news is that in 11 weeks they’ll be giving away a Series 3. Though TiVo officially has up to four months beyond the sweepstakes to deliver.

So speaking of worshipping that false idol, we now have a little more info to base our speculation on. I’ll go first… Series 3 HD will be available 9/1 @ $800 a pop. What’s your guess?

Update: This is now a contest! Predict the Series 3 release date and cost to win a TiVo-branded wireless adapter. Details are in the comments.

Grand Prize: 1 Special Limited Edition TiVo Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder w/Product Lifetime Service
Average Retail Value: $1,500.00

Selected entrants will receive the the weekly prize by mail within thirty (30) days of the Weekly Sweepstakes end date and the Grand Prize by mail within four (4) months of the end of the Sweepstakes Period (exact timing subject to change based upon availability of Grand Prize, which is scheduled to be released for public sale in the second half of 2006).

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OCAP – Who’s Capping Whom?

Justin Thyme, industry insider and crackpot, provides anonymous analysis and commentary.

There’s been a lot of discussion and curiosity about the relevance of OCAP in being able to watch TV your way. I’ve attempted to put together the picture as I see it. I have no clear idea of a solution to the problem presented — all I’m doing is attempting to describe the situation. Although it has rather vast implications, the essential details are simple. How this struggle plays out affects consumer electronics manufacturers, such as TiVo, in profound ways.

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TiVo’s Series 3 HD Lives!

Megazone’s been quizzing the TiVo folks all day and has tons of details on the forthcoming Series 3. Well, except for a concrete date (mid-late 2006) and price. All in all, exciting news if TiVo delivers.

megazone says: The unit has two CableCARD slots on the back and it will support Multi-Stream (CableCARD 2.0) or Single-Stream (CableCARD 1.0) cards. If you have multi-stream then you only need one card, but as long as only single stream cards are available you can use two of them. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA. The unit has front panel controls clustered on the right, and a nice display in the middle with a very cool feature – it displays the title of the show(s) tuned at the time, so you always know what it is recording at a glance. The remote ls also sleeker – a slick update of the Series2 peanut with minor changes for HDTV (such as an aspect button). But the big change is that the remote is backlit! TiVo will also be selling an external SATA drive for easy storage expansion, and they have that on display here too.

Photos provided by megazone…


Series 3 Front View


Series 3 Front Panel


Series 3 Rear Panel

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DCAS To Replace CableCARD In 2008?

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) has reported to the FCC that it is feasible and preferable to move security away from CableCARD and to the Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS). Instead of using a CableCARD hardware key for authentication and decryption, a common security chip is embedded within set-top boxes or televisions will … Read more

HD CableCARD Coming To Windows MCE

Thomas Hawk got the scoop on Microsoft providing HD CableCARD support for the Media Center Edition (MCE) of Windows Vista in 2006. Even though they’re using the existing one-way standard, this is very exciting news which extends encrypted digital cable beyond the TV. It makes me wonder if TiVo is sitting on the sidelines waiting … Read more

TiVo Meets With FCC, Talks CableCARD

I don’t have many details on this yet… Last week TiVo attorney Henry Goldberg and Vice President Matthew Zinn met with the FCC Chariman’s Media Legal Advisor. TiVo says: The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the background and status of the development of cable cards and TiVoÂ’s efforts in that regard.