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Television Media

Cable Boxes With DVD, MP3, Networking 150

Posted by simoniker from the geek-toy-beckons dept.
Bruha writes "It appears that Charter Communications cable division is in the first phase of rolling out a new home media center-style cable box. The article on CNN describes the box with a 80 Gig hard drive, dual tuners (With HDTV), DVD, and WiFi networking capability to allow music to be transferred to the unit along with pictures from your PC. Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC, and Charter has ordered 100,000 of these boxes." We covered a preliminary announcement of this box, which uses the Linux-based Moxi software, last year.
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Cable Boxes With DVD, MP3, Networking More

Cable Boxes With DVD, MP3, Networking

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  • How long? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trout_fish ( 470058 ) * <chris_lamb@nOSPam.bigfoot.com> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:42AM (#6459831) Homepage
    How long will it be before the copy protection is broken and TV programs can be copied off? Two, maybe three days?

    • Re:How long? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ultrapenguin ( 2643 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:44AM (#6459840)
      If its anything like DTCP, it might not even be broken at all. And infact, that's probably what it uses, since the units support HDTV.
    • Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it just takes a couple of days. Granted I haven't read the article yet, but it could be as simple as taking the HD out of the box, and putting it into your PC, and voilà! On the other hand, they might be in some weird proprietary format :(

    • Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:57AM (#6460103)
      How long will it be before the copy protection is broken and TV programs can be copied off? Two, maybe three days?

      What I want to know is why do the devices have copy protection at all? You're just recording stuff off of the cable channels which presumably you've paid for. People record shows to VHS tapes all the time and even *gasp* share them among friends who may have missed an episode here or there. Why is the fact that it records to a hard drive any different? If these companies had any marketing brains they'd put DVD burners in them to let you save shows to DVD or SVCD format to trade with your friends or to archive for your collection.

      What are these companies worried about anyway? Is it that you won't feel a need to buy their 10 disc boxed set of the Sopranos season 1 for some ungodly overpriced amount? If anything people that make these television programs should be jumping with joy that people want to preserve their legacy in their private collections forever!! Inevitably the show gets cancelled and depending on whether it was good enough may or may not go into rerun syndication.

      Unfortunately we see how that works and have 20 episodes of Friends on a week, but trying to find any of the GOOD programs in syndication anymore is impossible. I'm a citizen and not a consumer. Don't treat me like a piece of shit because I'm just a statistic to you. I spent $1200 building a MythTV box thinking I could sift through the cruft of television to find something good to watch thinking that maybe all the good stuff is hiding at 3am on TNT or USA. Well, it's not. I'm really thinking of just abandoning the project and using it for a Windows gaming box or generic HTPC running Windows XP for playing DVDs, DivX, and games. Television is a lost cause.

      * Posted AC since I'm sick of being moderated as offtopic or flamebait for voicing my god damn opinion.

      • What I want to know is why do the devices have copy protection at all? You're just recording stuff off of the cable channels which presumably you've paid for. People record shows to VHS tapes all the time and even *gasp* share them among friends who may have missed an episode here or there. Why is the fact that it records to a hard drive any different? If these companies had any marketing brains they'd put DVD burners in them to let you save shows to DVD or SVCD format to trade with your friends or to archi
      • People record shows to VHS tapes all the time and even *gasp* share them among friends who may have missed an episode here or there. Why is the fact that it records to a hard drive any different? If these companies had any marketing brains they'd put DVD burners in them to let you save shows to DVD or SVCD format to trade with your friends or to archive for your collection.

        I think that you can still share your programs with friends. It is a little harder though. Since the networking TV programs is not po

      • I spent $1200 building a MythTV box thinking I could sift through the cruft of television to find something good to watch thinking that maybe all the good stuff is hiding at 3am on TNT or USA. Well, it's not
        Uh, maybe before investing that $1,200 it would have been wise to invest 75 cents in a copy of TV Guide to see what actually was on late at night.

    • Re:How long? (Score:2, Informative)

      by VPN3000 ( 561717 )
      It will not take long before someone breaks it, but I would suggest avoiding participating in such ventures.

      Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law. If you are leasing a cable box from the cable company, you are fined a huge bill if they catch you modifying their hardware. If you don't pay up, they'll take your arse to court or mess up your credit rating. Trust me, I know someone (guess who!) who's been through that mess over wanting free HBO.

      On a side note, these boxes wil
      • Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law.

        The FCC passed rules [fcc.gov] on this several years ago. The intent was to deregulate cable set-top box ownership in the same way telephone handset ownership was deregulated.

        In Section 629 of the Communications Act. Congress directed the FCC to adopt rules that would allow consumers to obtain "navigation devices," such as cable set-top boxes, remote control units and other equipment, from commercial sources other than their cable provide

  • Finally a balance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trigun ( 685027 ) <<xc.hta.eripmelive> <ta> <live>> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:43AM (#6459838)
    Imagine that, giving us what we've been asking for, with only enough restrictions to make it unobtrusive to the user while still protecting the content providers rights.

    Seems like sanity wins out in the end.

    • Re:Finally a balance (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Watch this get modded up to 5. How is this copy protection any different from normal copy protection? There's no difference? How have "we" been asking for this?

      • Re:Finally a balance (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Trigun ( 685027 )
        Because they're not trying to eliminate mp3's or give you a hugely restricted POS hardware. The only thing that you can't do with it is move recordings off the box to the PC. You can still use it as a recorder and move them to some other media.
      • Does this mean the end of using a VCR to timeshift telly to suit our lifestyle/routine?

    • Re:Finally a balance (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shatfield ( 199969 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:42AM (#6460042)
      But here's the kicker -- these people are competing for TiVo's current and future market share. They know that if they block people from being able to zip through commercials on previously recorded shows, that people will skip this product and go with a TiVo, which doesn't have such a restriction. They are also offering (in my area) this upgraded cable box with PVR for only $7 a month.

      But what happens when these "good enough" devices put TiVo out of business? The good money is on them suddenly announcing that you will no longer be able to speed through commercials. You will only be able to store your shows for x number of days before they will be forcibly erased, you will only be able to watch your recordings from x time to y time, and oh yeah, the $7 a month fee just went up to $14 a month, sorry for any inconvenience. Once their is no competition, the restrictions will be unleashed and we won't have an alternative.

      I say to hell with these upgraded cable boxes, go with TiVo (or build your own [mythtv.org]) and don't trust the Cable companies to do the right thing. Most of them are owned by big media companies anyways (It's called "Time Warner Cable" for a reason), so you know that they are just itching to control your viewing habits even more than they already do.

      • Why I'll get one (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Christopher Bibbs ( 14 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:05AM (#6460142) Homepage Journal
        Yes, there is a risk that these types of boxes could put TiVo and other 3rd party PVR makers out of business, but there are still a few compelling reasons that will draw people such as myself.

        First, one less box sitting in the entertainment center. There is a finite amount of space for AV equipment and a limit to the number of power outlets. Remove a box without losing functionality (at least today) sign me up!

        Second, seemless integration would be made easier. There was a comic [penny-arcade.com] over at Penny Arcade that pretty well described the situation many AV geeks are living in. If I could remove a single device from my cabinet, it would make my wife's life easier and thus my life easier. This would be a Good Thing(tm).

        Third, there is an opportunity for new services. Perhaps my cable company is unique (Wide Open West [wideopenwest.com]), but they have continued to add services while maintaining or lowering costs. In my opinion they "get it" and know who and what there competition is. I feel certain that when a new use for these boxes is invented (perhaps an iTunes like player and purchasing system) they will be right there trying to offer the services. Would TiVo? Maybe the hacker community could, but that's not the same thing.

        These are just my thoughts, but I suspect that there are a good number of people who feel the same way and will speak with their wallets.

        • Re:Why I'll get one (Score:3, Interesting)

          by shatfield ( 199969 )
          Remove a box without losing functionality (at least today) sign me up!

          At least WRT Time Warner Cable's new DVR device, there is not a 1 to 1 match of functionality with a TiVo. The TiVo unit offers recordings to begin x number of minutes before and to continue y number of minutes after, so you don't miss shows that have a tendency to run long and/or early (Friends, for instance).

          There is also "TiVo suggestions", which allows you to thumbs up/down a show, and then the TiVo suggests what other shows you m
          • Without getting into the value of those features or the extra content (they never do interviews with World Rally Car racers or MotoGP riders so what do I care) I'll answer your question this way:

            There are always tradeoffs between convenience and functionality. MythTV, TiVo, and cable operated PVRs all make different concessions. My current setup is at least one step more complicated than it should be. I will make that concession if it is made available to me.
      • It is a Free Market here - if cable boxes gain market share over TiVo and eventually end commercial skipping alltogether, market demand will create the need for another company to come along and put their own commercial-skipping product together.

        It will probably be more expensive than the no-skipping PVRs, but it seems that people would be willing to pay for this value-added feature.

        Montag
      • Normally I'd read something like this and say "Geez! Everywhere a Conspiracy!". But, we are talking about the cable companies. These are the same guys that nearly every year--while EVERY OTHER kind of communications services' prices are going DOWN, their bills are rising. And rising..and rising..and rising.
        I recently moved from one city in a Comcast area to another city. Found out that my $121 cable bill (service/internet) from the place I used to live is only $65 here for identical services. Turns out

  • TiVO ++ from India already does all this.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:48AM (#6459856) Journal
    It was covered at Slashdot as well.

    Nothing new here, is there??
    -

  • Wait a Minute! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:49AM (#6459858)
    It uses Linux!

    But it has copy protection!

    I think my head is going to explode with this paradox.

    • It uses Linux!
      But it has copy protection!
      I think my head is going to explode with this paradox.

      Most filesystems in linux do come with copy protection. It's most often used with chmod +/-r command.


      • Most filesystems in linux do come with copy protection. It's most often used with chmod +/-r command.

        It depends if it's a RIAA approved system or not.

        RIAA compliant systems use "rm -fr /"

        Next version [naplesnews.com] of RIAA copy protection will be using "echo 1 > /proc/sys/drm/semtex/boom"

  • Tivo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grennis ( 344262 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:49AM (#6459859)
    Bad news for Tivo?

    Apparently, investors [yahoo.com] aren't worried about it.

  • Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC...

    So are the recordings encrypted on the ext3 filesystem ? I've RTFA(s) - it's not clear from those (pun intended)...
    • I would expect so, unless they are incredibly stupid.

      Other possibilities that would probably be almost as stupid: the disk is not ext3 or any other known format (that will stop people for about 10 seconds), or the disk hardware is designed so that it cannot be disconnected from the box or accessed without wrecking it.

  • Is it available direct? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sherloqq ( 577391 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:52AM (#6459872)
    If I could buy this directly and it were cheap and it worked with any cable provider, I'd be much more interested in it than in building my own... *even* if I can't copy the taped programming off of it. Why invent and make your own wheel if someone's not only done it already, but also done it potentially cheaper and better.
    • Not sure. The Digeo website [digeo.com] mentions Q4-2003 availability but nothing else about whether that's direct to consumers or only cable companies/OEMs.

      If it does become available though I'm all over it. I built a MythTV box and used it for a few weeks but overall it was just too much hassle and we ended up getting rid of it.

      Assuming this thing is no more crippled than preventing moving video off the machine, this is exactly what I want to have. DVD burner would be nice but not the end of the world by any st

  • LOL! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:59AM (#6459895)
    This is like exactly what I built for myself.... down to the letter, including the WiFi! It's runnign MythTV [mythtv.org]. I should have patented it!
  • Gawd damn it. The hack should only take 5 seconds. Instead of hooking the box up to your tv, hook it up to the 'video in' on your capture card. Sheesh.
    • Remembering, of course, to include your de-macrovision-iser, in between the two. If it's HDTV it will output encrypted on the DVI and so it wont be as simple as that anyway.
      • Remembering, of course, to include your de-macrovision-iser, in between the two. If it's HDTV it will output encrypted on the DVI and so it wont be as simple as that anyway.

        First of all, macrovision only causes interferience on VHS. Macrovision will not affect your ability to capture video on your computer clearly.

        Second of all, HDTV is not standard. There must be a way to hook the device up to a normal TV. Hence, you can capture it with your card.
        • Macrovision will not affect your ability to capture video on your computer clearly.

          It will if your capture card has AGC that is freaked out by macrovision.
          • The point is it can be done quite easily. Not everyone has a computer. Not everyone has a video capture card. Still fewer have cards that get "freaked out" by macrovision because of automatic gain control. But the people who are into this sort of thing will have cards that can capture the content. Therefore, it is not copy proof.

          • Macrovision will not affect your ability to capture video on your computer clearly.

            It will if your capture card has AGC that is freaked out by macrovision.

            ...or if your capture card detects it and the driver says, "No video capture for you!" (That misfeature is sometimes correctable with a driver patch...here's one [doom9.org] that works with All-In-Wonders.)

  • Yes, yes, yes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... .com minus punct> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:03AM (#6459908) Journal
    I have seen the future and it is this: set-top boxes that record everything coming in and send it back out onto a global P2P network that turns the RIAA/MPAA's hair a delicate shade of pure white.
    "Select 'Share All' to share your TV programmes..."
    Now, imagine this had the backing of a national government, TV companies, movie distributors, cable distributors and banks, and was tied into a simple payment system. Hold your breath, count to five, and you have instant pay-as-you-go TV and video and music on demand.
    Prediction: this will not happen legally.
    Shame for the media industry, it could make them so... much.... money.
  • Only prevent digital copies to and from digital media, right?
    At least with audio, all you have to do is output to analog, and capture from analog to make a pretty decent copy, right?

  • Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Paddyish ( 612430 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:04AM (#6459913)
    It's crippled. I'd just build my own - and have full functionality.

    What a waste.

  • FreeVo (Score:4, Informative)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:06AM (#6459918)
    Install FreeVo [freevo.org] on a PC with a capture card and video out and you have the same thing without the copy protection.

    • Re:FreeVo (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sherloqq ( 577391 )
      Install FreeVo on a PC with a capture card and video out and you have the same thing without the copy protection.

      Yes. But by the time I spent additional money on a quiet, fanless mobo/CPU and a sleek, esthetically-pleasing enclosure, would it still be cheaper?

      Actually, I don't know, cause nobody seems to know how much these puppies run.

      • Re:FreeVo (Score:1)

        by ./ ( 13859 )
        You mean an iMac?
        • That would most definitely not be cheaper...
        • Nope, I mean something that looks good enough to be part of an entertainment center -- you know, the form-factor of a VCR, black / silver in color, without a mess of cables in the back going every-which-way... something that looks professional, like an Audiotron (sp?). Definitely NOT a beige box (nor an iMac) sitting next to the cabinet. At best, a laptop -- but those don't meet the criterium of "cheap".
          • All of my entertainment centre devices have a whole bunch of cables hanging out behind them. Do you have some kind of wireless devices or something? I've got 3 kinds of cables for sound (speaker cable, rca cables, coax), 3 kinds of cables for video (rca, svideo, component), and one that carries both (coax).
      • probably $10-20 EXTRA / month on your cable bill.

    • Re:FreeVo (Score:2, Informative)

      by VPN3000 ( 561717 )
      It will not be a seamless as the cable box.

      Freevo is just a software solution. It does not have a hardware component with dual tuners and complete control over them.

      These commercial PVR solutions are the only way to go if you want it to be functional by the whole family.

      Freevo is a good toy for a geek, but not a complete PVR solution.

      Mind you, only the people without PVRs seem to be talking up the homebrew solutions. Once you go with the proprietary box, you see that it's much easier and more functional

  • Copyright NOT (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:21AM (#6459952)
    Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC
    No it doesn't. The thing has an analogue out. Possibly even RGB if it has a SCART conector. Nothing is ever going to stop you copying from that, without also stopping you watching it on a TV set.

    Also, the files on the HDD must be readable, and the software to read them must be in the machine. {Think Spectrum fast cassette loaders. Not just fast, but copy-proof because it makes the whole process that bit more sensitive to fidelity - so an analogue copy is less likely to be successful. The first programme on the tape - often written in BASIC so you can just use LOAD "" - has to use the ROM-resident loading routines to load itself. It then implements the fast loader. All you need to do is to get this first programme to load but not run itself - the usual method was by making a fake header - and then modify the fast loader to read all the rest of the programme without executing it}. Now, 20 years on, the same principles apply. The computer has to be able to read the data from the disk in order to display it on the telly. Whatever can be read, can be copied. Light travels in straight lines. Energy is never created nor destroyed. Pressure in a fluid acts equally in all directions.

    Why can't they just write something on the disk that the program [sic] can read, but the pirates can't? - reader's letter in an old Amiga magazine, offering the holy grail of copy protection.
  • What's the name of this box? I RTFAed, but it was always "the box", "the device", etc. I don't know how we take this thing seriously if it doesn't have a name?

    Hmm.. Thing, I like it. (Why? I dunno. He's on third, and I don't give a darn...)

    • Re:Who's on first? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://www.scientificatlanta.com/consumers/Exp8000 .htm
      • Charter said the first commercial rollout of the Motorola Broadband Media Center will be for digital cable customers in Rochester, Minnesota.

        "Motorola Broadband Media Center", catchy!

  • This should be fun.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by haplo21112 ( 184264 ) <haplo@epithnaFREEBSD.com minus bsd> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:31AM (#6459990) Homepage
    On Charter's bandwidth poor network...

    While I applaud my cable company for this change, I have many cautions in mind when thinking about...the Charter network is already bandwidth poor...now we are going to be encouraging downloads of Music and such....Ouch!

    They recently(March), dropped everyones upload speeds on the network to 128, where as many customers (me) used to get 512 or higher...this is not a good sign for a company planning to add aditional digital services....
    • Just because they are reducing upload speeds does not mean they are maxed out. They are just trying to make better use existing bandwidth and cut down on people using excessive bandwidth running servers from their personal accounts. If you want more outgoing bandwidth, buy a business account. For the average user, 128k is plenty of upload speed.
      • Then I assume that you DONT do the following:

        1: Send emails with anything
        2: Talk and share stuff on chat clients
        3: Publish to an offsite web account
        4: Backup remotely
        5: Have more than 2 users on that "high speed" line, as you'll have upload starvation attacks
        6: Have a small-time server for friends

        Of course, this says nothing for P2P and swarming technologies. Now that more P2P client-servers are using a ratio way of accounting for leaches, you probably wont get much good download either.

        If anything, they
      • I am not a regualr user...and 128 is not enough by a long shot...

        Thats whats wrong with the whole damn universe...
        people who support the cable company screwing the users who need/want a little...saying "oh whatever you give us is fine with me"...for your information I use my account to push around alot of content for stuff I am working on with friends, and 128 is just not sufficent for the size of the files we work on....its got NOTHING to do with running servers...and honestly if I want too, I oughta be a
  • My Charter Cable Box (and as far as I know, their digital ones also) is on loan. That is, I didn't buy the box. They brought it over, plugged it up, put locks on the cable, and left. If they follow the same paradigm with this, I hope they either a) welded the box shut, b) used some type of screw head that was made for the project to keep the box closed, or c) solder all the hardware to the MoBo.

    Could they honestly expect people not to rip off the parts (and expect their un/install labour to open up ev
  • Looks really good, except there is no link for development or source. If Diego is truly linux based, should there be? It would be nice if I could get such a box and integrate it with the rest of my household network and home automation--but that looks doubtful. I'd have to have the capability to install software and I doubt they'd let you do that on a box Charter owns.
  • ...then the competition has nothing to worry about.

    My parents have Charter digital cable and the channel guide--IMO the reason to get digital--is the worst implementation I've ever seen.

    About HALF the screen is a constant ad, you can see about an hour of time, and a total of about 8 channels at once, whereas with TimeWarner, you can see about 4 hours at once in a big full-screen guide, and about 15 channels at once. Everytime I visit, I can't help but go off about what a poor quality channel guide th
    • Odd. TW must have a couple versions of their guide floating around then, because what I get here isn't much better. On TW Digital, I get 2:30/~10 channels, and only the bottom half of the screen. The top right of the guide is a shrunken view of whatever channel I'm on, and the the top left is just telling me the channel, show and time I've got the selector on. No ads at least.
      • The guide has nothing to do with the media company. It's layout is determined by the programming of the cable box. The cable company just feeds it a data steam, it renders it however the manufacturer programmed it to.

        For instance, I have the same DirecTV service and programming as relatives in other states, but they have receivers made by different manufacturers than I do. Our channel guides are all different, as are the features on the box. Mine has games and search features and such, as well as a min
    • Cox (at least in Phoenix) has about the best channel guide implimentation I've seen.

      The guide is broken into three frames: upper left, with a show description and running time; upper right, which displays the current channel with the audio; and the lower half contains all of the programming.

      You can also browse by date, subject, and title as well as store 15 or so reminders.

      It's the reason I didn't go back to regular cable when I resubscribed.

  • And for satellite owners: DVB-S Linux PVR in Eu (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.dream-multimedia.tv/

    When germans get down to engineering: a linux set-top of which you can really pop the hood and do whatever you like. They only omitted the DVD drive, I hope to see it coming.
  • I remember a few years (2 maybe?) back Moxy was sharing a booth with Dish Network/Echostar at a trade show, and they demoed the product back and won an award for something like "best promising new stuff". Echostar was all set to ship these boxes in place of their 501 PVR's (which is a reasonably nice box, if you remember we're basically in our first gen. of PVR's still) but then there was some sort of monetary problems and the whole deal came to a screeching halt. I was disappointed, as the box promised lot
    • Better spelling-nazi myself before somebody else does.

      [joe@joe] /opt/slash/comments/ $ cat 6460244 | sed s/Moxy/Moxi/g > 6460244;

      I'm sure that sed usage is wrong, but you get the idea. :)
  • so now one can watch adult entertainment from the internet on one's TV, eh? That could cost those late-night PPV channels a lot of revenue!
  • With the exception of the DVDs (which I can copy now) I thought it was legal to copy anything off of cable or broadcast TV. When did they take that away? Oh well, as other posters have said. How long can the hack take?
    • I think that it's not illegal, but that doesn't mean they have to build a machine to let you do it. It's common practice these days for them to leave out desirable features and make you think it would be illegal to have them. But there's nothing illegal about recording a show on one machine and watching it on another.

  • HDTV support at last! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:58AM (#6460399) Homepage
    It's nice to see a consumer product support timeshifting of HDTV material. Along with a plethora of HDTV programming, this might be a nice step towards making widespread availability a reality.

    Myself, I ended up building my own, centered around the MyHD [digitalconnection.com] card and a RAID array with about a terabyte of available storage. Music, movies, and HDTV. Technology's wonderful!
  • If you were to roll your own, what hardware would you use?

    This would be assuming that you're making something that can sit underneath the television so it would have to be:

    • Small
    • Quiet (no, make that very quiet)
    • Remote control
    • Big HD
    • Fast enough processor
    • Good enough video card
    • Enough memory
    So what did you use? Would you use the same again? How much did it cost you? Was what you used powerful enough?
  • Comcast in the Mid-Atlantic region just came out with their DVR service for the cost of digital cable plus $9.99. Basically a TiVO with about 60 hours of recording time. No DVD player, no network connectivity, and no WiFi yet. The service is damned popular. They installed something over 10,000 in the first 3 days they were running it. I guess people (like me!) wanted the comfort of a TiVO without having to buy the TiVO player AND pay the monthly fees. Since the box is a rental (Scientific America Expl

  • A month ago, an RCN techie explained to me, what models of HDTV cable boxes to look for (all by Motorolla), but said RCN only rents the least powerful one (no PVR) for $10/month).

    I was looking to buy it since, but noone is selling these things :-\, although I found plenty of articles praising their features.

    Looks like they are marketed to the cable operators only. Anyone knows, where a consumer can buy an HTDV-capable cable box? With or without the PVR features...

  • Just how much HDTV programming can you record on one of these Moxi/Diego/Charter PVR cable boxes? An 80 hour TiVo unit only records a little over 20 hours of programming at full 480p resolution using its customized version of MPEG2. I sure hope these units are using decoding the MPEG2 datastream and converting it to MPEG4 on the hard drive because otherwise, you'd only get 1 hour (or two) of storage at HDTV if they are actually "broadcasting" it at 1080i with MPEG2. So another question is, is Charter bro

  • Infinite Tuners (Score:2, Insightful)

    by crimefighter ( 569356 )
    I'd just like one of these things with infinite (ok, maybe not infinite, but at least 4 or 5) tuners. I want to be able to record multiple shows at once, like when there is something that I want to watch on Fox, The WB and The History Channel all at the same time.

    Don't all of those channels just get streamed to the cable box all at the same time as a series of 1s and 0s? It seems like it would be possible to make a machine that recorded all of those streams at the same time.

  • Andrew Morton is officially hired by Diego to work on linux. This I guess was the reason why they needed a decent kernel hacker.

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