I'm not sure DTV is dead. I just think they're going after the lowest common denominator. Once the masses start adopting HD in droves, they won't know DirecTV's average DVR from a TiVo, and their HD-lite from 'true' HD. I think DirecTV are very well placed to make bucketloads of cash, I just think they're doing it at the expense of their most loyal and historically most profitable customers.

I believe they misjudged the attraction of the TiVo brand - or at least I hope they have. Once Comcast have the Tivo option, I think it will be interesting to see how many defectors there are, especially if Comcast have a comparable HD offering. I know seeing the Giants baseball in HD will be compelling for me next year, which is not currently an option on DirecTV.

But at what cost are those gains? How much is an MPEG4 encoder/decoder vs. MPEG2? It may just be easier to put in a bigger hard drive since the prices on those are dropping fast. Let's say MPEG4 gave the same quality but was 20% smaller (just a random %). A 40 hour Tivo is now 48 hours. Nice but not amazing. If the MPEG4 part costs $20 more than the MPEG2, it isn't worth it.

For DTV, the switch to MPEG4 is obvious because they can't add bandwidth easily (i.e. launch a new sat). For a box in your house, it is really a cost analysis of the components.



They are talking about a Tivo for DirecTV. DTV has dropped Tivo and Tivo can't make a DTV box without DTV's permission.

Bruce

Count me in also. I agree completely with everything you said. My loyalty to DirecTV is tied heavily into their Tivo integration. If that is lost, I'm looking elsewhere for a company that can provide Tivo.

I guess I don't get the affinity that people have to the current HD TiVo, I mean, it's stuck at version 3, no home networking, no networking at all without hacking it, which after hacking my DSR6k over and over I'm pretty much tired of.

Is it because the current HD TiVo records OTA broadcasts? I live in a totally white area, no broadcast signals of any kind, heck, hardly any radio either.

I can say though I would like the native resolution feature, my tv has a much better scaler than the HD TiVo, but I just suck it up and leave the thing at 720p just to make it easy for the wife...

For me the reason is simple. It simply works. I never have to reboot it, it always records what I want, I just leave it be. Granted it's slow - which is especially noticeable after my SD-Tivo got 6.2, but it still works perfectly. I have no need for networking - I pipe the signal over a modulator to my other non-HD TVs in the house. I did have the HDMI go out, but the replacement has worked perfectly.

I hear stories all the time about other DVRs not recording properly, needing periodic reboots, missing programs etc. I think it's easy to get used to the TiVo reliability, and I'd rather not lose that. Until something proven as reliable with all the fancy new features comes along, I'll follow Tivo. They've earned my loyalty. I'm sorry to say I can't say the same about DirecTV who seem to consistently let me down.

I wholeheartedly agree. I have the HR10-250 and get all the locals OTA with the roof mounted PR-8800 and the Pre-amp. I will not change a damn thing until I have to in regards to my DVR. I'm going to enable the networking features, but that's it.

The other DVR's don't compare. Cable is not available at our house so this is the best solution available. Also with OTA we get the true HD feed.

To the original question in this thread. There is currently not a TIVO box that does MPEG4.

Haven't heard or read anything about one in development but that doesn't mean jack squat.

ymmv

I think the affinity would be for a real Tivo HD box on directv, not the watered down version of Tivo that we have now.

The current box has never had a significant update, and probably never will.

I would love to have all the features of the standalone tivo on my HD box, but it's never going to happen.

-smak-

Well, I like many switched from Dish to DirecTV for two reasons... One, Dish customer service was terrible, and two, Tivo.

I switched from Cable to Satellite because Cable sucked. Now, Comcast has some nifty offerings, but in many areas, mine included, there are a TON of USEFUL channels that are still analog.

Translation = Cable still sucks, in a lot of places.

I don't know why anyone would go back, until Comcast starts delivering 100% digital content. If they were doing that when I Got fed up w/Dish, I'd probably be a Comcast customer, sign up for cable internet, and drop sbc/yahoo dsl too.

I'm in the same boat with a lot of you... Though I didn't get an HR10-250, I did go to D* for Tivo, and am planning on upgrading to HD, and now I'm in love with Tivo, so I have serious concerns regarding whatever the decide to call their new HD DVR that does MPEG4....

But all that aside, I can't believe anyone that would be receiving some mix of analog and digital cable would switch. That just seems crazy to me... OR... I need to be re-educated, and I've been fed very bad info over the last several months.

thanks everyone for the info. I was considering buying the Directv HD Tivo receiver. But I'm a big Tivo fan (love the interface, slow or not), and it sounds like it will be dead in two months. Yes, they might let if continue, but who wants to commint to a 2yr contract with Directv and not have a full tvio offering. I'll wait to see what they offer in two months.

Personally, I'll stay away from Comcast as long as possible...too many complaints from friends about their service and reliablity.

The HR10-250 won't be dead in two months. It will probably still exist for several years. The only advantage to the new MPEG4 unit for at least the next 2 years will be for those who want to receive local HD channels from DirecTV. I receive all my local channels in my area from an OTA antenna. I do record an occasional HD program from satellite from HBOHD or SHOWHD, but the majority of what I record in HD comes from an antenna on my roof.
I plan on using the HR10-250 for the next 3 to 5 years.

So if you want a TIVO HD PVR to record HD locals, when they become available, you are SOL as TIVO will never be able to receive MPEG-4 which is required to receive HD locals from Directv. At least this is how it looks to me.

Yes, that is correct. To receive the new HD Locals via DirecTV you will need their new MPEG4 HD capable receivers, none of which will be TiVo based.

Where do you get that Tivo will never be able to recieve MPEG-4? Do you know what the next tivo box will be??

Directv will not let Tivo build another unit to receive Directv signals, therefore we will never see a Tivo that receives an MPEG-4 signal from Directv.

In my neck of the woods, Comcast is obviously preparing for sales tries at D* subscribers. I don't know if they bought the D* list [everything's for sale!], but, I was called earlier this week by a very tech-savvy Comcast direct marketing person. She was in VA.

She knew I was a D* subscriber for a long time. She started right in making it clear she wasn't going to try to get me to drop D*. She also [obviously] knew I subscribed to Comcast broadband. I was offered a net $5/month price cut if I let them run a TV feed to the front of the house and set me up as a basic cable subscriber. Even if I never use it.

Her pitch was it would then be there whenever they had something to offer I might want as an upgrade.

Oh yeah, after I said, "Yes", she bumped my line speed from 4 mbps max to the business rate = 6 mbps.

Their tech is due, next Thursday, to run the add'l line. I like that idea, anyway, because of the potential of eventually feeding broadband hardwired to the living room in addition to my study in the back of the house.

Why would I want to recieve lower quality HD locals from DirecTV when I can receive them all OTA?

Because 90% of the market either can't or doesn't want to have to worry about OTA.

You're not in the core market.

Sadly, I might be in that same catagory too.

I'm with you brother - as soon as I can I'm dropping D* like a bad attitude...

They (Comcast) are wiring my town starting this spring goodbye D* - Hello broadband, HD locals and no drop outs...

Why does Tivo have to build a D* reciever you know you can hook a SA to a reg. D* riciever and you still have TIVO So when HD is there why couldnt you still do this?

Because it would cost lots and lots of money to do this. Encoding an HD signal is still out of reach of the consumer market.

The new Directv HD boxes output component and HDMI/DVI video. Both of these connections are uncompressed, and it would cost a fortune to encode these signals back into MPEG.

The SD standalone encodes from analog baseband (or RF demodulated to baseband). It needs to do that to achieve digital storage efficiency for analog video. An encoder for a DT standalone is not necessary, as it is for the conventional standalone Tivo. DT OTA is already MPEG encoded, and thus already compressed for efficient storage.

All that a OTA DT standalone would have to do is exactly what the HR10 does today, minus the sat receiving capability, which is demodulate 8VSB to data, and write/read that to/from the HDD. The EPG info is delivered by sat, but there is no reason that it could not be delivered retro-fashion over dialup, just like the SD standalones. If they could incorporate PSIP, they could minimize the number of calls to the mothership.

The HR10 could technically be used as a standalone for OTA DT with as little as a software up rev, but Tivo probably is contracturally barred by their DTV agreement to even think along those lines.

IOW, what that means is that if they wished to put a standalone OTA DT Tivo out there, R&D is all but complete on it. But a standalone that would work with a DBS tuner for sat-delivered HD is not in the cards. What is being wished for (a TIvo standalone to work with DBS signals) won't be soon coming, but what is really needed by many of us (a TIvo standalone for OTA DT) probably isn't too very far away.

Will there never be another HD channel added to DirecTv service in MPEG-2 format? The last new addition I know of was ESPN2. I have no interest in changing anything of my current setup. I get all of my locals just fine OTA. I love my HD-Tivo capability. I won't switch to cable because of the sports offerings with DirecTv. However, I'd like to be able to receive new, non-local HD offerings from DirecTv. So I guess my question is, will every single future HD offering be MPEG-4?

Doubtful that we will see any HD additions in Mpeg-2

Because, they really just aren't that silly. The Directv relationship is over as far as new equipment is concerned, so they can't build an mpeg4 box to directly record DTV signals.

They could build a stand-alone mpeg4 box, but what would be the point? Digital cable channels are encoded as mpeg2; Comcast is well into its digital simulcast conversion, and TimeWarner has said that they want to have 1/2 their systems converted by the end of the year. A cable-card standalone Tivo in that environment that converted the signal to mpeg4 would actually give you a decrease in quality, and what's the point in that?

You wouldn't, their obviously not spending millions of dollars to launch satellites to service people who already have it now for free!!

If you are in the Denver Market for example, you have two choices:

1) Move within 4 miles of downtown Denver to pick up their low power digital broadcasts. (Imagine what THAT would do to housing prices!)

2) Get cable (if your fortunate to live in a major area that has comcast, I have US Cable which doesn't even offer a DVR let alone HD...)

3) Get the new MPEG4 locals on sat from DirecTV, lose TiVo.

i know that Verizon FIOS TV isn't offering MPEG-4 (at least not yet), but as soon FIOS is available here i'll will sign up in a second. more HD channels available and not having to pay extra for locals. the only thing that i would REALLY miss would be east/west nets.

can't have everything i guess.

I just this week switched from Dtv to comcast. They have a long way to go to be anything even remotely comparable to tivo. That being said, however, I love the HD locals with no dropout or pixilization. Comcast did not mention taking my receivers, and gave me $25 off the package price for 16 months because I switched from satellite. That along with high speed internet for 3 months at $19.95 and $49.95 thereafter.
Ed