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Originally Posted by davidthornton
I recently decided to cancel two of my three TiVo boxes as well as two of my three Sky+ HD boxes. The way I watch TV has changed and I no longer felt that I was benefitting enough from multiple STB around the house. Having multiple boxes seems nice but its more to clean, more to manage (in respect of what's on each HDD), more to potentially maintain and I feel that in the near future the trend is going to drift away from anything other than one main central STB.
IMHO Virgin's TiVo MRS has taken far too long to gain the limited traction it has attained. Too few channels that I want to watch support MRS and I haven't seen enough effort being put into promoting MRS as a significantly important feature. I had TiVo (x3) since Virgin offered it, being a former TiVo S1 owner, and paying possibly £150 for each box. After two years (or has it been three, I've forgotten!), and although I'm aware of many of the great features of TiVo, I don't consider it has become the great product here that it could have become.
I recently looked at what dish.com are offering in the US. It appears to be a single primary "whole house" DVR with multiple tuners inside and multiple "streaming" mini STB's positioned next to secondary TV's around the home. The secondary STB's can stream recorded content from the single DVR or stream live content via it. This has the benefit of keeping all recordings in one place and secondary boxes can be much smaller and quieter (great for the bedroom etc). Who really wants a HDD and fans blowing on a STB anywhere but in the main entertainment room?! 
I realise that multiple TiVo's on Virgin give three individual tuners per STB right now. So when I had my three TiVo's I could have chosen to record up to nine programmes simultaneously across them. I also realise that the majority of homes wouldn't want internal coax cables running from a primary STB to secondary STB's (that appears to be how dish.com do things) and so running split feeds from outside properties is how things are currently done by Virgin. Once Powerline or wifi improve further and box to box communication speeds also improve we might start seeing Sky selling branded Roku (they've bought into that company) allowing Sky users the ability to stream from their STB to secondary televisions. Hopefully Virgin are looking at something similar as well as offering a box with more tuners and a beefed up 4Tb HDD. Six tuners in a box would allow three recording and three live feeds simultaneously, with the live feeds being streamed to smaller "streamer" STB or USB receivers plugged into secondary TV's.
I wonder what others reading this thread relating to MRS think about what I've said. Is MRS really something of the past, despite never really taking off in the UK, and should we be looking more to IPTV or at least the centralising of content at one home location in the near future? |
I kind of agree , I've spent a lot of time in the US over the years and they've always generally had tech out before we see it here , you refer to the Hopper Whole home DVR system employed by Dish Network in the US. The hopper is a 6 tuner DVR with sling integrated and wifi enabling you to transfer recordings to your iPad it also has 2TB capacity , each additional room requires a network client called a Joey to complete the whole home setup , DirecTV in the US also have a similar whole home DVR called 'Genie'.
In the future I wouldn't be suprised at all too see Sky introduce a similar setup using the SAT>IP protocol and an IP>LNB , a single Ethernet capable of carrying 8 channels to a main box with network clients in additional rooms , SAT>IP software can be installed on iPad allowing you a direct feed on your tablet in your home. The future for VM depends on whether their new owners stick with TIVO or change to Horizon.