I loved the Best Buy salesman's response when I told him I was looking for a High-Def Tivo. He had the sort of "ooo, suh-wheet" kind of response that made me feel really good about it.

So the kid gets the standard-def Tivo and I ebay the Samsung high-def receiver. (If anyone on the BBS wants to make me an offer for the Samsung unit, it's the SIR-TS160, you'll save me the hassle of photographing it and writing up an ebay description.)

Anyhoo, DirecTV's system was down at the late-night time I called to activate the thing, so I couldn't tune satellite stations. I'll get that working in the morning. But for now, I was able to tune terrestrial highdef from my local area and the thing worked great. It even takes the same IR codes that the SD DirecTivo took so I didn't need to bust out the JP1 cable for my 15-1994. Oh, and the secret handshake for turning on the 30-second-skip feature works the same as it always did.

It's funny, I think the 30-second skip might very well have been the selling point that tipped the SWMBO scales in favor of getting this thing. I wanted it as an early Christmas present to ourselves that simultaneously gave my daughter her birthday present (she'd specifically asked for a Tivo for her room). But SWMBO was giving me the raised eyebrow for a while. At one point during the conversation, I'd mentioned that it would give us the ability to skip commercials during high-def viewings of "The West Wing", specifically citing that we could skip: "It's more of a... Sea Foam." Anyone who sat through last week's West Wing without commercial-skipping will recognize that phrase... it got repeated every single commercial break during the entire show.

So far, only a couple of things are disappointing about this unit:

1. It doesn't seem to be giving me terrestrial analog stations like the samsung unit did. It only seems to be listing the terrestrial digital local stations. Anyone know whether this thing is supposed to tune analog TV stations? I thought it had four tuners in it, two of which were for receving terrestrial stations.

2. The Tivo guide and menus are as slow as ever. I expected this because I was told it would be the case. But I got spoiled by the lightning-fast guide and menus on the Samsung unit. I'll be sad to see that go.

But on the good side... I CAN TIVO HIGH DEF NOW! WOOOOOOOOO!

Hi,

I don't have this unit, so I'm not sure but according to this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthrea...ota#post4204650

you cannot get Analog OTA, you are expected to get that via DirectTV. I just got a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD-DVR from my cable company. Boy a HD-DVR is great! Enjoy it!

Peter
Miami, FL USA

Ain't it grand? Like the other guy said, I think it assumes you're going to get the local channels from DirecTV.

We have the same feeling here when watching footbal games. We have to start a non-home team game about 50 minutes before it ends, because with the 30 second skip between plays, that's how long it takes to watch a whole game. And it's all in Hi-Def! Woohoo!

Yup, you can only get OTA digital channels, no analog. For me, this is mostly a good thing. My PBS station only does its fund drives on its analog channel, while sending through the national PBS-HD signal, unscathed. Most of the other channels are just standard def that's been up-converted, except for the occasional prime-time HD signal. One nice benefit, for me, is that channel 2's tower is apparently far away from me and has the longest wavelength, which my antenna doesn't do very well. Analog reception is piss poor, but their digital channel is a higher UHF frequency and comes in loud and clear.

I dropped the local channels I'd been getting from the satellite and started paying for the "HD package" which includes ESPN-HD, Discovery-HD, Bravo-HD, and HDNet. Discovery and Bravo have some eye candy, but repeat the same shows over and over. HDNet is actually pretty good, although their movie selection is a little offbeat. HBO-HD is great, although I was surprised to see that many of the shows are HD but 4:3. Movies are always 16:9.

Amusing or annoying, the "local channels" from the satellite are still listed next to the OTA local channels. So, I have channel 13 (unsubscribed), and 13-1, 13-2, and 13-3 (OTA). It sometimes gets confusing.

Oo, hey, I just thought of a question. Are there any features that let me control the priority of HD versions over SD versions?

Example: I can get West Wing episodes from a few different places. Some of them in HD, some in SD. Is there a way I can tell the player to ONLY record high def versions of a particular program, or to give extra weight to the high def versions?

There didn't seem to be any features like that, other than specifically selecting a time and channel.

It seems to "just work". I have several wishlists (movie directors, etc.) that occasionally find HBO movies. If it only tapes it from HBO2, I checked and saw that it never aired on normal HBO. If it did, then it will prefer the HBO-HD version, every time.

Oooo. Cool.

What are the HD outputs on your TiVos? I have an HD monitor, but it only has composite inputs. Can I get an HDDirectTiVo to work with that set?

Dammit. Yes. Component.

Doesn't it also have HDMI?

The way I've set it up is that when you search for a show, it'll list the show once for however many channels it finds it on. I just make sure I select the one on the HD channel (70, for instance), and it just works. Same for the OTA shows.

I don't know if you watch Dead Like Me (everyone should, IMO), but that show looks fantastic in HD. But the HD show I'm looking forward to most of all this year is, without a doubt, Carnivàle.

Good lord that's hard to believe as slow as the SA one is.

If the DTiVo is a series1, then you need a cachecard with 512MB of memory. Speeds things right up.

Bruno

Living with the unit for a while, I have the following comments to make:

1. The menu screens do not take advantage of the fact that it has high def output. They could have made so much more information appear on any given screen, but instead it looks exactly like a standard def Tivo, with the same number of information lines per screen.

2. The menu screens in fact look like filtered-upconverts of the standard-def screens in the original Tivo. The text looks quite fuzzy compared to, say, my Samsung receiver when it was plugged into the same input on the TV. It makes me think I need to adjust the TV's focus. Fortunately, this is only with the menu screens. The actual HDTV broadcast pictures are as sharp and clear as I would expect.

3. It doesn't seem to always record high-def programs in favor of standard def programs. For example, I noticed it suggestion-taped a movie off of standard-def HBO. Since the movie was on the main HBO channel (not HBO2 for example), I know that there was a high-def version of the movie playing at the exact same time on the high def channel. I wish it would have taped the high def version instead of the standard-def version. There's no place in the software where I can exert influence or control over this.

But on the good side:

Picture is excellent. Even standard-def upconverted-to-1080 pictures are excellent. Allows simple control of aspect ratio for standard-def pictures, and allows gray bars instead of black. Allows you to change the ouput format (1080, 720, 540, 480) from the remote control. Oodles of hard disk space. Works exactly like the standard-def tivo units in every way (ie, really really well).

I agree with all of your observations. I was a little disappointed with the menus as well. I like how you can alternate betweek the 1080, 720, etc by just pressing Up on the D-pad. However, most stuff looks just fine to me with just leaving it on 1080.

I'm also suprised at how much space the thing has. I know mine has at least 5 HD movies, several 1 hour HD TV shows, and a bunch of other HD programming, but I can still record entire HD football games and hours upon hours of SD programming. It's phenomenal!

Maybe you could add the HD channels to your "Favorite Channels" list?

AFAIK, there is no way to get it to prefer the HD channels other then setting up a season pass on an HD channel or using HD as a criteria in a wishlist.

It wouldn't necessarily be desirable to prefer the HD channel in all cases. Much of what is on HD channels is upconverted SD so it just wastes space.


My two complaints about the HDTiVo are the slow menus and lack of native output mode. But the lack of native output is made much less objectionable by having the resolutions available with one button press instead of buried in the menus or an impossible to find little hardware switch on the back (like my Samsung HD receiver).

But, overall, it's a fanstastic product. I give TiVo a lot of credit for not skimping on the specs. I was really surprised when it was announced that it would have 2 satellite and 2 OTA tuners. They could have gotten away with one of each.

I've been waiting for this device since the day in 1999 when I got a bonus from work and I went to Best Buy and blew it on a first gen TiVo and an HD receiver. I considered the TiVo interesting but it was the HD receiver I was really excited about. It only took a couple of days before I was hooked on the TiVo and hardly ever used the HD receiver because, well, it wasn't a TiVo.

Patiently awaiting a cheaper 2nd generation product. Congrats on the new toy. I have gotten wrapped up in the frustration over DirecTV not giving us the Home Media Option, but the thing is, they give us a great product and let us use their services for $5 a month, regardless of how many you have in your household. 2 tuners and no recompression means that I'll stick with DirecTV as long as they keep offering Tivo they way they do. It's also good to know that they are still putting money into the product even though Hughes has been bought out.

I assumed that it was a license fee paid to Tivo from DirecTV.

Well, what do you think the churn rate is for Tivo? I just signed up a year ago and wouldn't dream of cancelling unless someone comes out with something superior. As far as I can tell, no one has. So, just because they may lose some new customers does NOT doom the Tivo to failure. They're obviously doing just fine with the subscriber base they currently have. And I don't see it shrinking.

I wonder how many customers direct tv will loose by making their own DVR. I would get direct tv for the dual tuner tivo if my apartment wasn't on the wrong side of the building and always planned on getting it when I move.

I think if tivo would make a dual tuner stand alone unit it would take some customers from direct tv.