Quote:
Originally Posted by ahardie
Conversely I would have thought that someone who takes the time to connect his pc to his tv and likes what he sees could see the potential of the tivo box. If they do build on the apps and make use of the 10 meg modem it could be a really good machine. If tivo and VM can build on things like that it could be well worth the extra money just for that never mind the standard tivo features that many of the original tivo users still rave about.
Having said that until we ordinary punters see the tivo in action the jury is obviously still out.
Just a few things that together should make it worth it, at least to me.
1) The 1Tb drive.
2)A dynamically updated epg far superior to what VM have now and possibly superior even to Sky's allowing full use to be made of the three tuners.
3)The usual tivo bells and whistles that the original tivo users rave about. Recording what it thinks you like could be a useful addition to catch up tv which is already one of VM's best features.
4)I believe the USA tivo has back up to pc etc.. That would be a fantastic addition. I wonder if we will be allowed this in the UK though? This might be crippled because of right issues.
5)Streaming off the internet using the dedicated 10meg connection. Also plenty of bandwidth for HD streaming.
6) Much better epg with backwards searching etc.
7) Apps allowing things like movie downloads by subscription. Would be nice but definitely one that could take time or might never appear.
There might be others I don't know about. It would be interesting to hear what other people think.
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I think it took me 2 minutes to connect my PC to the TV, pretty easy really and I can easily do a lot of the things you highlight for the cost of a 3 metre VGA cable. Not ideal for everyone but it works for me and it cost £20 for the cable and no further subs involved too.
I agree if you find your V+ is always full then a bigger HDD would be useful.
I also agree that anybody would welcome a dynamic EPG, including some Freeview users who have that now with a cheap box and it is pretty lame that we as Pay TV subscribers have to pay around £200 or whatever it costs to get this feature.
Going back in time for catch up through the EPG is a great feature but far from unique, YouView will offer it, Talk Talk and a lesser known on demand service VeryTangyTV have offered it for ages.
Apps to allow the latest movie streaming in high quality would be nice and that might be a reason for me to get it in the future but I am not aware of any plans for this to be introduced. Our new TV has this feature, I haven't tried it though and it can be used for YouTube and other things too but I cannot comment on PQ yet but I doubt it would be as good as a dedicated Tivo app but my point is that again it isn't anything unique.
I used to have BT Vision before VM, in my opinion their STB was superior to the V+, the only area it really lacked was it only had 2 tuners but that was never a big problem for me personally as far as I recall. Dynamic EPG, great user interface, lightning fast too, smashing search options. A genuinely nice STB but that's all it was, a STB.
The reason I left is because overall for the cost it was lacking in linear content compared to VM, nice hardware, bells and whistles as you say but not as much on offer for what it was actually used for, watching TV. It couldn't find content that wasn't there but then again the box was free.
They introduced a new STB before I was leaving, I believe it was faster but functionally it was identical but most importantly it only received the same channels and content as my older box though and until this changes with Tivo I think I will stick with the V+ as I see no overwhelming reason to change.