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Television Media

TiVo to support HDTV by "Year-End" 282

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-it-when-i-see-it dept.
JMorgan in Seattle writes "TiVo has (finally!) announced support for HDTV. It's a ways off (end of the year), but at least we know that HD TiVo is on the horizon. In two separate press releases, we learn that TiVo will support both standalone and DirecTV hi-def PVRs. TiVo is really on a roll--first Rendezvous support, and now this. Now if only DirecTV would add more HDTV channels..." I've been waiting to get an HDTV receiver for this. Joy.
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TiVo to support HDTV by "Year-End" More

TiVo to support HDTV by "Year-End"

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  • The never ending story (Score:4, Funny)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:40AM (#5055533) Homepage
    TiVo to support HDTV by 'Year-End'

    Which year is the question :)

  • Just a heads-up, if you are currently a DirecTV subscriber, you will need to get the triple-LNB dish to receive all the HDTV signals.

    • Getting a trible LNB dish (Score:3, Informative)

      by 1984 ( 56406 )
      A lot of people have had success at getting DirecTV customer retention to pay part or all the cost of a triple LNB dish when upgrading. Also, people have squeezed various amounts of free programming from DTV to defray the cost of the HDTV receiver (which is the expensive bit at around $600).

      Have a look at this thread [avsforum.com] at avsforum for more details.

      New customer? If you go to buy a DirecTV system at Best Buy or the like, they'll try to take an extra $100-$150 for the triple LNB dish. But you can get one for free. Sign up for DirecTV on one of the regular packages (often free after rebate -- try Blockbuster and you also get a year's free DVD rentals), and tell them you want Para Todos, the Spanish network. That comes off one of the other sats, and you'll get a triple-LNB capable dish. Might not have all three LNBs on it, but the 3rd LNB is about $40, and just slots in with no rewiring etc. You don't actually have to by the Para Todos channels, either -- the dish install and program signup seem to be handled separately. (I went through this a couple of months back after reading about it on the Web.)

  • 90 Minute Delay? What about outputs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eudaemon ( 320983 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:42AM (#5055554)
    More like -- is it going to support the 90 minute delay
    proposal before the FCC?

    I.E. Some content can only be viewed no later than 90 minutes after it was recorded, or
    not at all.

    Is it going to have DVI or Firewire connectors with forced-down low-res on the firewire
    is another important one.

    • Looking through the Tivo Community forum:

      http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay. php?s=f867ee8b74033b3ee90a5c787563b51c&forumid =3

      it looks like for Par Per View, a 90 minute timeshift window would be enforced.

      All other TV sounds like it wont have the same restrictions.

      It sucks.

    • Re:90 Minute Delay? What about outputs? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pii ( 1955 ) <jedi@nOSpam.lightsaber.org> on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:10PM (#5055835) Journal
      Actually, the HD DirecTV receiver's missing Firewire support to this date was a decision of DirecTV. There's been a great deal of discussion over on the AVS Forum [avsforum.com], and the Tivo Community Forum [tivocommunity.com] about this. (Samsung, as an example, makes a new OTA HD set-top box that has Firewire, but the corresponding new HD DirecTV box lacks the Firewire port.)

      It appears that DirecTV has finally decided to relax the Firewire restriction, and you'll be able to see HD DirecTV receviers with Firewire support. (Which will kick ass... My TV has Firewire.)

      No clue what connections will come on the HD DirecTivo, but I sure hope to see them with Component Out, DVI, and Firewire, supporting both early adopters (Component In only), and both digital interfaces.

      (I'd like DVI to die a horrible death, but I recognize that most HDTV buyers can olny get one, or the other, and there's no reason they (the people with DVI) should be left out on the cold.)

  • Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ShooterNeo ( 555040 )
    Be interesting to know how much faster the hardware has to be to record the full 1080i HDTV stream (or will Tivo cheat and downsample?). Its 20megabits a second I believe, and already comes compressed so the requirements may not be that high. Probably just need a much bigger hard disk.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:45AM (#5055582)
      That's 2.5MB/sec.

      You'd need ~9GB per hour. So the largest harddrive available currently would give a whopping 20 hours of recording.

      • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)

        by c.derby ( 574103 )
        that is based on the largest currently available drives AND that would be 20 hours of HD recording. not all programming is available in HD, so you would more than likely be able to record more than 20 hours on a single drive.

        btw, current DirecTV+TiVo combo boxes have a capacity of "about 35 hours". i would guess that reasonable recording of HD+SD material with your drive example would yield >35 hours of recording.
    • I'm hoping the DirecTiVo will continue in the same fashion as the current model and just record the encrypted off the air broadcast to the harddrive so there is no loss in quality at all.

  • Interested (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aknaton ( 528294 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:45AM (#5055580)
    I am interested in Tivo but I really do not like the fact the Tivo requires a subscription. Will the Tivo operate with no subscription?

    • Re:Interested (Score:4, Informative)

      by avalys ( 221114 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:48AM (#5055621)
      The subscription is only for the program guide data. You can still pause/rewind/fast forward live TV, and schedule recordings manually, without a subscription.

      There are ways to get the guide data into the Tivo without a subscription, from third-party sources, though I've never tried to on my unit.

      • Re:Interested (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Ciannait ( 82722 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:07PM (#5055800)
        Only with certain versions of the software, and with certain hardware.

        With newer versions, and units such as the Series2, the unit will go into "boat-anchor mode" (their terminology) if the unit has not been able to make a call for about a month. At that point, you can watch what you've already got recorded, but not much else.
      • Not any more. The latest Tivos (series II) do not work without a subscription.

      • Re:Interested (Score:5, Insightful)

        by McSpew ( 316871 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:12PM (#5055851)

        The subscription is only for the program guide data. You can still pause/rewind/fast forward live TV, and schedule recordings manually, without a subscription.

        This is no longer true. DirecTV models have always required a subscription (ridiculously cheap at $4.99 per month for up to 8 TiVo units or free with some DirecTV programming packages) and standalone units have required a subscription since they began shipping with the 2.0 software. All Series 2 TiVos require subscriptions.

        Anybody who complains about the TiVo subscription might as well cancel their cable or satellite subscriptions because they pay more for cable or satellite subscriptions and those alone won't bring someone the immense functionality and satisfaction a TiVo will.

      • The subscription is only for the program guide data.
        It will also get you more recent versions of the software than runs your TiVo, so you'll get new features and bug fixes with the subscription as well.
        • Unfortunately, most of those "new features" seem to be restrictions of unsubscribed functionality.

          So that's not a good thing.

          I now have a pet peeve. I am tired of paying $MONEY for a product (Tivo, Everquest, whatever) and then paying $money every month to keep it working. Make up your mind...want to sell a subscription service? Do it. Want to sell a product? Great. I am not willing to let you (the vendor) have it both ways.

          I really love the idea of TiVo...I just don't love the idea of paying $12/mo for it.
      • You can still pause/rewind/fast forward live TV

        Wow, it can fast forward live TV? Does it create some sort of wormhole to grab TV signals out of the future?

        I might get one just so I'll know the outcome of football games before they're over. I might be able to finally pay off my student loan.

    • Re:Interested (Score:2, Informative)

      by Samurai Cat! ( 15315 )
      Yes, it will, but it's a mere shadow of it's normal self. The schedule listings (what you get with the subscription) are, IMHO, one of the core goodies. You can still manually schedule recordings and watch them, but they all show up as (this isn't verbatim) "Manual Recording (date/time)" in the recorded program listing, as opposed to what the show name is. Makes finding the one show out of however many you've got sitting a real pain.

      On the HDTV thing... I wonder if they'll make this available to the old Series 1 units. I kind of doubt it... I imagine there's hardware issues involved. *sigh* Hopefully they'll offer some sort of half-decent trade-up program though.
    • All recent TiVo software releases require a subscription.

      But with DirecTiVo if you pick up the larger DirecTV channel packages you get the TiVo service included.

    • Re:Interested (Score:2, Informative)

      by splink splink ( 203531 )
      If you have a direct TiVo, the subscription cost is only $4.95 a month. And I think it's worth every penny. It gives you the ability to see show listings and descriptions up to two weeks in advance and see what's happening at the top of the hour or next/any hour across all channels when you're actually watching live TV. The directory is the second most important feature I miss when I travel (the first being all the standard TiVo pause, fast forward, etc. features). TiVo really isn't TiVo without the directory information and it's a small price to pay for great convenience.

  • Just out of curiousity... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MasterSLATE ( 638125 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:45AM (#5055581) Homepage Journal
    If you remember, a few days ago I was talking about Dish Network's weak grasp on the market... Does this mean that DirecTV will now completely own the market? Or is Dish Network also supporting HDTV (and consequently TiVo)?
    • Echostar just announced an HDTV-capable DishPlayer PVR at CES. And it won an award, too.
      Link is here [cesweb.org]

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:01PM (#5055753)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Unfortunately the rumor is that Echostar will start charging $9.99/month for PVR service when then current special (free PVR service) expires this June. I wouldn't put it past Charlie.

      • Re:Just out of curiousity... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The DirecTivos also record the signal with out reencoding, in fact the DirecTivo's do not have an encoder, one of the reasons they are cheaper than a stand alone Tivo
      • One of the advantages of the DishPVRs is that there is no subscription fee on top of the monthly fee for satellite TV. They also record the signal directly to the hard drive without re-encoding, resulting in no loss of picture quality. This should make it cheaper than a comparable TiVo since it doesn't need the hardware to encode HDTV signals.


        Current DirecTivos (or, sorry, "DirecTV with Tivo") have no monthly fee if you subscribe to one of their biggest packages. They also record the streams directly. I suspect that the HD-DirecTV models will, as well. I'm sure DirecTV will try to price competitively with their main satellite competitor, don't you? Also, there's a very large hacker community established for Tivos in general. Can you copy the data from your DishPVR directly to your PC?

    • Re:Just out of curiousity... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:27PM (#5055988) Journal
      If you remember, a few days ago I was talking about Dish Network's weak grasp on the market.
      And I thought it was very insightful too. I wrote a good critique here [slashdot.org]. A critical problem though that DN needs to get past if it's to progress in terms of market share, was something you didn't raise: namely the crippling effect of the DMCA. Dish Network has problems getting out of a rutt where, by all reasonable standards, cable companies have the upper hand. Cable companies do not have the same kinds of limitations when it comes to decoding multiple channels, they have two-way infrastructure, and they have the capabilities of adding non-television services such as telephony and broadband Internet services to their arsenals.

      Dish Network can only get beyond this point by making use of its relatively niche position to create specialised services such as PVR integration systems built into its decoders, and such. This, however, requires changes - it is content providers that restrict the use of equipment to view and record content, and, with the DMCA, the content producers have the final say. If they want to enforce a "no record" bit, Dish Network's equipment must enforce it, regardless of how useless such a tool would be.

      This quagmire of Dish Network offering nothing but a wider choice of channels and cheaper programming to compete against entrenched cable monopolies will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

      You can help by getting off your rear and writing GPL'd content parsing code which uses the DMCA in nasty ways in order to discredit it. Write code that makes it impossible to use it to produce encrypted, DMCA protected, content, but at the same time enforces little limitations upon its use. Appreciate the work being done by groups like Ogg Tarkin but that if these systems are shipped with DRM systems, such as Real intends to do with Helix, use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Get SMP working in OpenBSD so that you can efficiently deploy that operating systems on your workstations and servers. Think about freedom, openness, and choice, and work to create software that protects all three. This is an issue that effects YOU directly, YOU code, and that your code is dependent on opened systems.

      You CAN make a difference. Don't treat coding as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep your skills up to date, keep writing great code that makes the world a better place. And, most importantly of all, code.

  • ... goddamned recession.. I WANT MY TOYS!!!

    Seriously though, time warner in nyc (at least in my 'hood) recently introduced HD-capable boxes and a range of channels (7XX) in HD, including the local broadcast networks and HBO.. IIRC the HD boxes are priced the same as the normal digital boxes and can be swapped with an office visit..

    Then again, the next round of upgrades includes an HD-ready set _and_ a new receiver (to handle Xbox, PS2 digital connections).. damn lack of motivation...
    • Unless I didn't pay attention, it doesn't say if it was a DVD-R drive, just that it would combine a DVD and a Tivo.
      • You don't read well, it is a built in DVD\DVR drive. The R is Recordable. So yes, it will burn stuff to DVDs right from the Tivo portion. This will be an incredible device!!
        • You don't read well, it is a built in DVD\DVR drive. The R is Recordable. So yes, it will burn stuff to DVDs right from the Tivo portion. This will be an incredible device!!

          Despite the arrogant and insulting tone of your assertion, the press release does not say that. DVR is an abbreviation for Digital Video Recorder. It merely means it records to a hard drive. Maybe I'm just rising to the profered flamebait, but please make sure you're right before insulting others for being wrong.

      • You are correct sir, I read what someone else wrote, but didn't actually check the release myself. When reading the actual release, it says nothing about the DVD-R, except that they've already released a box with a HD and DVD-R that doesn't have Tivo. Checking the Tivo Community [tivocommunity.com], this was an eyewitness to the prototype box at the show:

        "Well, the newest entry to the TiVo product family is the new Toshiba media server unit, which includes a DVD player and a TiVo in one unit. It should be available this fall in the $500-$600 price range. It has component outputs coupled with its progressive-scan DVD player so this TiVo may be one of the best PQ units yet. The DVD player functionality is integrated in the TiVo UI with a "Play DVD" option on TiVo Central (not the exact wording, but something similar). The physical looks of this unit has got to be the best looking TiVo yet as well. Otherwise though, it will be a standard 4.0 Series 2 with an 80GB HDD. An excellent purchase if someone is looking to get rid of another box, or have something very stylish on their TV instead of the current look of TiVos."

        My apologies for not double checking the info. A combo DVD-R+Tivo is a great idea, but I guess one they are afraid to explore.

  • Space Issues? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:47AM (#5055610)
    Now I'll be able to record the first 5 minutes of my favorite HDTV program!

    • Re:Space Issues? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:07PM (#5055798) Homepage Journal
      Now I'll be able to record the first 5 minutes of my favorite HDTV program!

      I recognize that this is funny, but all the TiVo has to do is record the compressed bitstream, much like the Direct Tivo. Even on DirectTivo, recording the bitstream is higher quality and saves space over recording and encoding an analog signal.

  • Compression (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Templar ( 14386 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:48AM (#5055622) Homepage
    Hmm.. normal compressed streams from the networks come in at about 19Mb/sec. Even taking it down to 15 hurts the image. It will take an awful lot of disk space to store movies.

    That said, I'm greatly looking forward to it -- the only other solution, DVHS is buggy and expensive.

    This combined with the new ESPN-HD channel will make my TV purchase worthwhile...

    • Re:Compression (Score:3, Informative)

      by nedron ( 5294 )
      "Hmm.. normal compressed streams from the networks come in at about 19Mb/sec. Even taking it down to 15 hurts the image."

      That's one of the problems with most cable and satellite HD delivery. They generally deliver a signal in the 15Mb/s range. Assuming you get good local UHF reception, you're often better off relying on your local broadcasts when available.

      As for this comment:

      "DVHS is buggy and expensive"

      What are you talking about? D-VHS decks can be had for well under $500, can record 4 hours of FULL HD content, or 24 hours of standard def on a single tape. Newer decks even keep track of what's been recorded on each tape to make things easy to find. Name another currently available consumer friendly HD recorder that you can purchase for under $500 right now.

      D-VHS has been around for years and I'm unaware of any problems in the underlying technology. Are you sure you're not referring to a specific issue (ie. JVC's problems with their D-Theatre 30K unit)?

      The other benefit of the D-VHS platform is that, for the foreseeable future, it is the only way to purchase pre-recorded HD movies. In fact, most of the D-Theatre titles currently available actually run at the same data rate as the studio masters, 28.2Mb/s. This is a significantly higher MPEG2 datarate than the 19.36 used by HD, nearly half again as fast.

  • Now if they would only support broadband (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alen ( 225700 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:49AM (#5055637)
    I'd love to get a Tivo, but I'm not about to spend money running a phone line to it. I would be very happy if I could just plug it into my network and have it update itself via my DSL connection that 3 other PC's share. Currently they only support ATT Broadband in their products.
    • They do support broadband, in their Series2 DVRs. There are USB ports, which you can hook up a USB->Ethernet adapter. Once you've done that, you just give a different dialing code, and it grabs an address via DHCP and does all its downloads over your broadband.

      There's a bunch of information on how to do this if you do some searching at http://www.tivocommunity.com.
    • Is how people have network jacks everywhere but no phone jacks. I'm assuming you have a landline because you have DSL, but maybe I'm wrong. You could just kludge your network jack and steal the brown pair (7&8) for a phone line.
      • Ive seen many homes with no landline.
        Broadband != phone line required.
        DSL = phone line required.

        You can get broadband over cable, and to an extent over satellite or wireless.

        Additionally, I have a T1 for my data connectivity at home.
        I am planning to move into a house in the next few months and plan to have NO landline there as well.
        I will use a T1 for data connectivity and use a VoIP phone for landline services.

        Currently my only phone service is provided by my celphone.
      • a) you could have a cable modem, so no landline

        b) you could have a barebone phoneline for your DSL, one that charges you for even local calls

        c) i do have network jacks in my bedroom, but no phoneline there

    • Re:Now if they would only support broadband (Score:5, Informative)

      by entrager ( 567758 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:23PM (#5055949)
      TiVo is adding support for USB->ethernet connection in April this year. It will come with the new software that all Series2 TiVo users will get.

      That's when the OFFICIAL support comes out. Unofficially TiVo can use a USB->Ethernet adaptor now. You set your dialing prefix to ,#401 and it will use ethernet instead of the phone line. VERY nice.
    • You'll have to get your own adaptor for it though. More details on Tivos web site..

  • Why are Slashdotters such HDTV-haters? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:57AM (#5055721)
    I've noticed over the last two years that so many articles about HDTV on Slashdot produce such negative comments from the readers. HDTV is not a "closed" system, it's an open format. Hollywood wants to make it DRM-able, it's true. But the FCC has already said that current-gen hardware will not be downgraded, quality wise, for non-digital connections (for those that might bleat about this being incorrect, please check the more recent FCC rulings about three weeks ago).

    Some of you will bitch about the high-costs, or come back with some snide comment about how HDTV "violates your rights"... whatever. Some luddites will even step so low as to say they see no discernable difference between regular TV and HDTV.

    In this case, many of you folks are as anti-HDTV as the big corporations are.

    HDTV and DTV are the future.

  • No Content (Score:2, Informative)

    by madcheesewarrior ( 315349 )
    No one with content is willing to risk Broadcast in HD for fear of copyright violations. Plenty of week old hockey games available for viewing though ... hooooray!
    • I guess I just imagine watching HDTV shows every week on CBS and ABC, and all those HDTV movies and series on HBO and Showtime...

      The Superbowl will once again be in HDTV this year. Here's ABC Sport's press release [go.com] about it.

      CBS had it in HDTV in 2001 - from here [digitaltelevision.com]
      The network also received recognition for providing the "Best DTV Sporting Event" for its HD broadcast of the 2001 Superbowl.
      Last year FOX had it in their sorry SDTV "high resolution" format. Supposedly the same quality as a DVD, but the Superbowl's image quality last year didn't even come close. They used interlaced cameras and converted it to progressive, so there was a lot of interlace "noise" in the progressive signal. The only benefit was the 16:9. See FOX Turns Chicken On HDTV [about.com] for more info

  • San Jose Mercury News article (Score:3, Informative)

    by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:08PM (#5055819) Journal
    Here is an article [siliconvalley.com] in the San Jose Mercury News about it.

  • Dish PVR-921 won the best of show (HDTV PVR) (Score:3, Informative)

    by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @12:13PM (#5055871) Journal
    I know Slashdot is typically very Tivo friendly, and I personally think Tivo makes a great product, but nobody seems to have noticed that Dish networks won the CES best of show award for their new HDTV PVR, the Dish PVR-921.

    Read about it here [yahoo.com].

    It looks like Dish will beat Tivo to the market, as they are entering beta immediately and planning for an April or May release date.
  • Who cares about HDTV? I'd much prefer to see Tivo finally launch in Canada. I'd love to own one of these puppies but the service/hardware has yet to be made available to Canadians. Wake up Tivo!
  • Anyone know similar gadget that would work in Europe and or in Finland ?
    • Tivo itself is sold in the UK. You could certinaly buy a non-subscription unit here and use it elsewhere that uses PAL. (although without program guide)
      • Tivo WAS sold here in the UK but they are now very difficult to find. Tivo customer services say that they are not selling any more because Thompson have ceased production of PAL units but that they MAY (my emphasis) find another manufacturer at some point in the future. Tivo on ebay now approaching £250! without subscription.
  • ... to get TiVo. I'd planned to this spring, but since it looks like I'll have to replace the entire recorder to get the combined HD/standard recording, I might as well wait.

    Fortunately a friend of mine already has one that I've been leeching from and going over occasionally to watch the recordings I've piled up. ;) I'm already converted.

    Damn you, TiVo, for making me wait to get the one I really want!!

    (Or am I wrong and misread the release, and it'll be a software upgrade for existing units, i.e. series2?)

  • Probably waited for ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @01:05PM (#5056398)
    See this previous story [slashdot.org] on how the cable systems and the HDTV makers have come to some agreement (yet to be approved by the FCC) on HDTV broadcasts including consumers' rights. It would not be surprising that TiVo waited for the agreement to be confirmed before it announced it's plans, lest we get to the point right before delivery to find that the HDTV standard won't allow for TiVo to work right because of the multitudes of formats and other problems.

    Also, this confirms with the information on what people will be able to record from HDTV signals. The plan in the above article stated that there would be no restrictions on recording over-the-air broadcasts (read: your local stations), while you could only time shift PPV events by 90 minutes and not save the recording. I'd suspect that other cable stations, basic and premium, would have some restrictions between those cases.

  • How about digital cable? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grimarr ( 223895 ) <langford.silicon-masters@com> on Friday January 10, 2003 @01:07PM (#5056425)
    What I'd like to see is a Tivo that can directly receive digital cable signals, without a set-top box. Why have a box that converts D to A, then have the Tivo immediately do A to D conversion right back?

    Does anyone know if there are patent issues or something similar preventing it? I've looked all over the net with Google, trying to find a board for PCs that will receive digital cable, and turned up nothing. A few places say things like "no products available" or "we hope to have a product like this someday" but that's as close as I could find.

    • Re:How about digital cable? (Score:4, Informative)

      by morgue-ann ( 453365 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @07:06PM (#5059685)
      TiVo's lack of support for standard-definition digital cable is no big deal, but HDTV is another matter.

      Digital SDTV is a maximum of 720x480 (or 704x486 (704=22x32) or something else close) which is similar to VGA's 640x480 but the pixels are narrower than they are tall. PAL digital SDTV is 720x540 with almost-square pixels.

      This maximum is the same as DVD and also known as CCIR-601. However, digital cable might have lower resolution to save bandwidth. TCTI/AT&T/NuevoComcast uses 352x486 on most channels on the HITS satellite and it's likely the content is softened (low-pass filtered) a bit before real-time-encoding.

      Therefore, re-digitizing and re-encoding the standard-def analog stream coming out of your digital cable set-top box is only moderately horrible. Motion artifacts will be a bigger issue than resolution because TiVo encodes in real time so can't go back & choose keyframes more wisely later. It also costs 1/100th of the encoders used by HITS and DirectTV do.

      Real-time-encoding of SDTV by a sub-$500 box is a reasonable thing in 2003. HDTV is another matter and the digital cable boxes I know of (Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 2000HD) only have analog video outputs (YCrCb component for HD). Pinnacle Systems [pinnaclesys.com] makes a system [pinnaclesys.com] where the HD option [powerdv.com] alone is $1000. HD on PCs now is where SD was 10 years ago- intra-frame (Motion-JPEG/DV-style) or no compression, using oodles of disk space (even with today's 180GB drives). Uncompressed HD @ 1920x1080x30x12bpp (4:2:0) is 90 megabytes per second. That means burning through a 180GB hard drive in about 1/2 hour.

      As the poster suggests, you want to get the MPEG-2 stream & just slap it on a disk instead of trying to recompress. For Over-the-Air HDTV broadcasts, this should be no problem. For cable systems that keep OTA in 8VSB...

      (something boxes were required to do a few years ago even if the provider doesn't support it- they have to pass through 8VSB with enough bandwidth/low enough noise that a receiver can still demodulate&decode it)

      an 8VSB-in-only HDTV PVR would work. Many systems are demodulating 8VSB and re-modulating at QAM64. If they also apply their conditional access (CA), it gets really sticky.

      The fact that there aren't digital-cable-ready TVs like there were(are) cable-ready TVs is something the industry, their Cable Labs group and the FCC have been working on for years. The biggest obstacle is Scientific-Atlanta and General Instrument (now Motorola)'s incompatible systems in the US. It's possible to run both on a single network under an agreement called Harmony, but they still see CA as the crown jewels.

      POD (point-of-deployment CA, rented from the cable company) was supposed to solve that by putting all the proprietary stuff in a PCMCIA-like card & making the boxes or TV's or VCRs or PVRs use standard interfaces.

      Google terms: PowerKEY (SA's system), DigiCipher (Motorola's), Conditional Access.

      Other sources: Multichannel News [multichannel.com] and Communications Engineering and Design (CED) Magazine [cedmagazine.com]

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