Your thought's on what the new Directv DVR's will be like?

[kbohip]

I know it's still way too early to know what the new Directv (non-Tivo) DVR's will be like, but I must admit I'm a little worried. I just got my Directivo's up and running yesterday after a couple of years using Dish's DVR's. So far I really like the Tivo setup. I've already upgraded the hard drive in my R-10 from a 80gb to a 200gb. I love the upgradeability of the Tivo. Dish DVR's are completely UN upgradeable.

I'm worried that Directv will take a great system like they have with the Directivo and ruin it by saving money and building their own, much like what Dish has always done. I can't imagine the Directv system having as many features as the Tivo units but hopefully I'm wrong. I do have a lot more faith in Directv than I do with Dish though.

 

[raymo721]

kbohip, you echo the thoughts of alot of us I'm sure. This is really a wait and see kinda thing. My HR10-250 was upgraded by Weakness. I called them with a heat problem the other day and asked them if they might be upgrading the new D* DVR and the tech guy said and I quote, "They don't even have a box yet." Now, I don't remember reading anything about one being at D*'s booth at CES 05, but maybe they won't be able to upgrade them cause the box will be a leased item? I wonder if we'll have the option of lease or buy? I know all of us with Tivo's will be dissapointed if they don't work as well. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[warkovision]

D* signed an agreement back in November '04 I believe with Ucentric to develope a new box. This was the same company that Voom engaged to design their never seen DVR. The V* feature set was to be (eventually) a whole house, networkable solution that seemed very powerful. Nobody knows really what features D* was going to go after, but it looked like they were going to have their own box to replace TIVO.Here's a link that deals with that speculation.

 

[JosephB]

the ucentric boxes are not related to the nds boxes. the nds dvrs are gonna be entry level, one TV dual tuner SD DVRs to begin with. I believe they have an HD version in the works too. The ucentric will be a totally new and different product which will be the whole house thing. the NDS boxes are meant to replace Tivo. the ucentric boxes replace tivo but are meant to be so much more (whether they will be or not remains to be seen)

 

[LonghornXP]

the ucentric boxes are not related to the nds boxes. the nds dvrs are gonna be entry level, one TV dual tuner SD DVRs to begin with. I believe they have an HD version in the works too. The ucentric will be a totally new and different product which will be the whole house thing. the NDS boxes are meant to replace Tivo. the ucentric boxes replace tivo but are meant to be so much more (whether they will be or not remains to be seen)

The multiroom HD DVR will be made my Humax and will have software from NDS and networking middleware from Ucentric. Now just so all of you know if your comparing the UK service BSkyB's NDS software to what this boxes software will be like you would be way off because the US NDS software for DirecTV will be a brand new design with brand new features that will be offered in the UK at a later date after its release on DirecTV. Again we have to wait and see if the software is as good as Tivo but I can tell you what specific features it will have.

Firstly it will have a very fast program guide that should go out two weeks. The guide will also have a picture window that will show video and audio of the current playing channels and the picture windows can playback both SD and HD channels. It will support the creating of favorite channels for each member of the family.

As far as recording and finding shows to watch and record it will have these features.

You can sort by Title, Keyword, Director, Actor, DD5.1 and HDTV. Pretty much it will have all the finding and sorting features of current Tivos.

You can schedule series as first run only, first run plus repeats and all shows. This feature would work like a Tivo because it will find them no matter what channel they are on but you can also specify to record only at a specific channel and/or timeslot.

I've heard that when fast forwarding once you enter into playback mode again it would skip back 10 seconds. It would also support three rewind and fast foward modes with them being slow, fast and very fast. They will have a button that you can press that would skip 15 minutes each press or if you hold the button for around three seconds it would skip to the end of the start of the show.

The multiroom side of things would allow any show to be scheduled and played back from any room. Also a show can be played back and resumed exactly where you left off in another room.

I hope this gives you some insight of how it works. I've seen a prototype of this software with these features and they worked pretty good considering how early it was and I wish I could give pictures but they didn't allow cameras of any kind in the room but I saw this about 7 months ago and from what I've heard its ahead of schedule and working very well as of now. Again more info should be coming out very soon.

 

[JosephB]

Thats not what all the information released up until now has stated...Dan over at DBSForums has said and information from press releases and the CES show has said that the NDS boxes will be running XTV software from NDS. The Home media center will be running ucentric software and the only NDS stuff in it will be the access card. the two platforms are not related other than they both receive DirecTV

 

[warkovision]

The multiroom side of things would allow any show to be scheduled and played back from any room. Also a show can be played back and resumed exactly where you left off in another room.

Longhorn, I was wondering if you knew how much like the proposed V* box the D* box would be. There was this cool feature where if you recorded a season pass for a show, it would set up its own "virtual channel " to view that particular program's epsisodes where you could elegantly jump ahead and back through recorded episodes. Don't know if this was just wishful vaporware, but it sounded great.

 

[Stargazer]

Is the virtual channel kind of like the Dishplayer channel 1 where you access the DVR Events?

 

[warkovision]

Is the virtual channel kind of like the Dishplayer channel 1 where you access the DVR Events?

Here's a quote in this thread from Scott on the Voom forum that described what he saw at CES.

"After the DirecTV press conference I shot down to the VOOM Booth and was given an impressive demo of VOOM's upcoming DVR product, what makes the VOOM DVR unique is you make your own TV channels. For example if you like Sinefield you can set the unit to record all the Sinefield episodes and all the shows can be seen on their own channel (IE the Sienfield Channel, Channel 901) to me this idea is better then just having all recorded items in one area, and it also is better then having folders. When you want to watch Seinfield you know you can tune to channel 901 for Seinfield. (And its also listed in the guide with all the other channels.)"

 

[LonghornXP]

Longhorn, I was wondering if you knew how much like the proposed V* box the D* box would be. There was this cool feature where if you recorded a season pass for a show, it would set up its own "virtual channel " to view that particular program's epsisodes where you could elegantly jump ahead and back through recorded episodes. Don't know if this was just wishful vaporware, but it sounded great.

From what I saw it wouldn't work this way. The prototype that I saw had one central now playing list that showed a list of all shows. All client boxes displayed the same exact list as the server box. Also a season pass show had all shows in a folder sorted by date aired. The way I saw it work was that under the server setup you could name you client boxes with something like Kids Room, Bedroom and such. So say your playing back a recorded show on the Kids Room client box you can press the stop key and it would bring up a list of options such as erase the program, play from the end, play from the start and another new option that says resume in another room and if I select this option it would list the other rooms so if I wanted to play it back in the Bedroom I would select Bedroom and once I walked in the Bedroom the box would have a freezed frame picture exactly where the other room was left that said press play to start.

I hope that gives you an idea of how it works but to answer the question no it doesn't create a virtual channel number at all.

Also to answer another previous post the multiroom HD DVR has this below.
Hardware is made by Humax.
Core software is provided by NDS and is called XTV.
Middleware if also from NDS and is called MediaHighway.
Conditional access is also provided by NDS and is called VideoGuard.
Core Networking features and multiroom middleware will be provided by Ucentric.

Whatever else was said beyond this is wrong. Ucentric doesn't make full software but only networking and multiroom Lan based software or middleware if you want to call it that. If you look at the Voom solution all the software isn't from Ucentric only the networking side of it.

 

[Ramy]

LonghornXP,

Why doesn't Directv refine their boxes to HD only? Wouldn't it be a cheaper solution overall since most of the mainstream channels will be HD in the future. I know all channels won't be for a very long time but since the HD boxes can output both SD and HD wouldn't it be better. Just curious.

 

[warkovision]

Thanks Longhorn. You said in the other thread ...

"Also this new HD DVR that is being talked about is a multiroom HD DVR with NDS software and Ucentric middleware. It will support both SD and HD in all rooms. It will also support both MPEG2 and 4. It will have the latest LG 5th generation ATSC HD tuner that has an internal splitter so two OTA HD channels can be recorded at the sametime. The server will have either a 350 or 400GB hard drive. All rooms can both schedule and playback anything recorded on the server. Also the server will have 6 total tuners. Four of the tuners will be D* tuners that can record both SD and HD in both MPEG 2 and 4 formats while the other two will be OTA ATSC HD tuners. Out of those 6 tuners four and I said four of them can be used at the sametime giving customers the ability to record four live shows all on at the same time. One server can support upto three client boxes for a total of 4 rooms but a customer can add a second server which would support another three client boxes for a total of 8 rooms. The second server would intergrate and act and look as one big server that would have either 700 or 800GB of hard disk space and this system would allow customers to record 8 live TV shows at the sametime from a total of 12 available tuners. The two server setup will have 8 D* tuners and 4 OTA tuners again only 8 of those 12 can be used at a time with this system. D* would only support two servers with 6 client boxes."

I know this is not a Tivo unit but was wondering - with all these tuners, will they have the 30 minute recording window or something similar for "pausing" live TV or "instant replay" ? This is one of the Tivo features that really makes my family's socks go up and down.

 

[LonghornXP]

Thanks Longhorn. You said in the other thread ...

"Also this new HD DVR that is being talked about is a multiroom HD DVR with NDS software and Ucentric middleware. It will support both SD and HD in all rooms. It will also support both MPEG2 and 4. It will have the latest LG 5th generation ATSC HD tuner that has an internal splitter so two OTA HD channels can be recorded at the sametime. The server will have either a 350 or 400GB hard drive. All rooms can both schedule and playback anything recorded on the server. Also the server will have 6 total tuners. Four of the tuners will be D* tuners that can record both SD and HD in both MPEG 2 and 4 formats while the other two will be OTA ATSC HD tuners. Out of those 6 tuners four and I said four of them can be used at the sametime giving customers the ability to record four live shows all on at the same time. One server can support upto three client boxes for a total of 4 rooms but a customer can add a second server which would support another three client boxes for a total of 8 rooms. The second server would intergrate and act and look as one big server that would have either 700 or 800GB of hard disk space and this system would allow customers to record 8 live TV shows at the sametime from a total of 12 available tuners. The two server setup will have 8 D* tuners and 4 OTA tuners again only 8 of those 12 can be used at a time with this system. D* would only support two servers with 6 client boxes."

I know this is not a Tivo unit but was wondering - with all these tuners, will they have the 30 minute recording window or something similar for "pausing" live TV or "instant replay" ? This is one of the Tivo features that really makes my family's socks go up and down.

I heard at first that client boxes wouldn't support at first the pausing of live TV but would support it later on via a software update but now I'm hearing that it will be supported from day one so that is a good thing. Also from what I hear the servers four tuners will have a one hour buffer each and each client box would have a one hour buffer.

 

[LonghornXP]

LonghornXP,

Why doesn't Directv refine their boxes to HD only? Wouldn't it be a cheaper solution overall since most of the mainstream channels will be HD in the future. I know all channels won't be for a very long time but since the HD boxes can output both SD and HD wouldn't it be better. Just curious.

That is being considered with just the MR HD DVR but remember it always will cost more to give a customer an OTA ATSC tuner that they won't use for several years. Even making them in mass amounts would still be more costly than making current SD DVRs in mass amounts. From what I hear once HDTV really takes off which they think would be around 2007 they would offer their MR HD DVR as their only DVR so even if a customer only has SDTV sets it would be cheaper to give a customer the HD DVR upfront compared with the cost of another visit or box swapout. Most customers would still need or want an installer to just hook up this new box.

 

[warkovision]

Now I guess we just wait and hope to hear more.....soon!

 

[LonghornXP]

Now I guess we just wait and hope to hear more.....soon!

Correct!

 

[Alan Gordon]

Ucentric doesn't make full software but only networking and multiroom Lan based software or middleware if you want to call it that. If you look at the Voom solution all the software isn't from Ucentric only the networking side of it.

Are you sure about that?! Scanning through Ucentric's webpage (Ucentric) seemed like they do make their own DVR products, software and all.

~Alan

 

[Stargazer]

I wish they made a reciever where we could tell it what we would like each channel number (be able to change the channel number as it would appear on the EPG or when you flip channels). They could have one EPG setup like a favorite list numbered the way you want it then another one numbered the way the company has it.

 

[raymo721]

LonghornXp You always seem to have the best and latest info. My question is, What will be available for those who don't need a multi-room server. Will there be just a HD DVR for people like me who only have 2 rooms with TV's in them? The wife is happy with her SD Tivo in the Den and I have the HD DVR in the living room. What will be our options? I know I'll have to replace the HD DVR, but will I have to the replace the SD Tivo with a HD unit? Seems the multi-room server is at the forefront of discussion, and I might have missed the answer to my question. Tks in advance!

 

[kbohip]

The one thing I would like to see on the new DVR's is a better way of keeping "padded" programs from causing conflicts. For example on Sunday night I pretty much record everything on Fox from 6 till 9. When I first set up the shows to record I added a little to the beginning and end of the shows to keep them from getting cut off to early. The problem is when I did that I tied up both tuners. Had this been on a single tuner SA Tivo I would have missed every other show. If I would have had other shows on other channels recording at the same time this would have caused a conflict.

I'd like to see them come up with a software smart enough to figure out what you're trying to do in a situtation like that and just use the one tuner to record the shows. I did have it set up with a manual timer to record for the whole 3 hours but I stopped that because I only got the program info for the first show.