PVR Wire

In a roundup of problems with DirecTV that I posted a few days ago (which seems to have caused quite a stir) I noted that DirecTiVo users were unable to get some normal TiVo features on their TiVos.

Unfortunately that is not the only issue that people are having with DirecTiVos with glitches in the PVR's ability to automatically record shows.

A spokesperson on CNET has said "it is aware of the problem and should have it fixed by this evening (last Friday)." However, at this point in time DirecTiVo users are continuing to report problems.

Some believe that DirecTV are deliberately sabotaging the DirecTiVo boxes to encourage users to switch to the new non-TiVo DirecTV HD PVR. This seems a little extreme to me and I'd prefer to believe it was a genuine technical glitch.

Either way it just keeps adding to DirecTV's list of problems that are keeping its customers unhappy.

At the CES last year it was announced that DirecTV and Microsoft were working together to link up DirecTV and Microsoft entertainment devices such as the Xbox 360 and MCE PCs.

Many believed that this would mean you would be able to have an installer come out and install a DirecTV tuner into your Media Center PC and get your local cable channels complete with PVR functionality. In other words your Media Center PC is your DirecTV set top box.

From a May interview on Engadget a Microsoft representative said "you can get essentially a receiver device that is a DirecTV receiver and connect it through some digital connection to your PC. [Doing so] lets you get all the great value from the DirecTV service, including High-Definition. If you subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket, you'll be able to get that. All that good stuff."

According to DBSTalk from a quick Q&A session with DIRECTV at CES last week, the HTPC DirecTV Cards are still in progress and in internal beta testing.

However I still think it will be some time before this is released otherwise we would have heard a little more coming out of the CES camp last week. I'd expect the very earliest we'll see this is the middle of this year.

Despite some good news and announcements coming out of DirecTV CES camp this week including 100 new HD channels, the possibility of cheaper PVRs due to improved satellite receiver chips, and an interesting but confusing OnDemand service that could be a Slingbox idea or some pseudo IPTV VoD service, DirecTV is still getting a sharp stick in the belly over the issues with its PVRs and HD service.

Faulty HR20 HD PVRs

There's the ongoing issue of the faulty HR20 DirecTV Plus HD PVR which is reportedly plagued with problems. While not everyone is getting the problems a huge chunk of people are and DirecTV seem to be nothing about it.
Tom Starner of HDTV Magazine goes into detail about these HR20 issues (nice work Tom!) and the conclusion is "there's little doubt a significant number of subscribers will hit the boiling point (of course, some already have) if the HR20 isn't fixed real soon."

DirectTV is showing off its new Sat-Go portable satellite receiver/TV at CES. We first heard about this funny looking device in November, but there are a lot of new details today.

The Sat-Go is only kind of "portable," weighing in at 25 pounds. The device folds up into a suitcase-like package for lugging around, and then unfolds for receiving and watching TV.

It was invented by Rick Rosner, a television producer who created CHiPs and The New Hollywood Squares. The chocolate brown color? You can probably blame that in part on Rosner's roots in 70s TV. But he says he also wanted to give the unit the look and feel of high-end luggage.

DirecTV will be marketing the product in outdoor camping, hunting, and fishing magazines. Although to be honest I'm not sure why someone heading out into nature to get away from it all would want to take a TV with them. It might be nice to get weather reports, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay $1000 to $1300 for that.

The Sat-Go is expected to launch in a limited production of about 10,000 units this Spring. It'll carry a $4.99 monthly subscription, which is the same amount you'd pay for an extra set top box.

We've seen a few ideas for PVR and TV entertainment products in your car such as the UVIA M100 to stream wireless media to your car, the Pioneer Raku-Navi In-car home cinema, and the $5000 F20WIRD portable in-car TV.

Now the latest in-car TV device is the MBR0201 from MBCO (Mobile Broadcast Corporation Japan). This is a TiVo like product that records audio and video for later playback from satellite radio or video signals.

The satellite video only work in countries with an advanced satellite infrastructure like Japan. Looking at the picture you can see the device in place on the cars dashboard beneath a small TV screen.

As with all these in-car entertainment devices I smell a high speed collision.

Way back in October, TiVo announced that Series2 users that had purchased lifetime service packages would be able to transfer their lifetime service to a Series3 unit for $199. While that adds $200 to the price of an already expensive device, it's by far the best deal around for keeping your TiVo subscription bills to a minimum.

Problem was, the offer was only good if you had a standalone Series2 TiVo. DirecTV customers who had received their TiVo's through the satellite provider were out of luck.

Now TiVo upgrader and reseller WeaKnees is reporting that DirecTiVo customers are now eligible to transfer their service -- if they do so before 12/31/06. There's no info about this on the TiVo website yet, but presumably you can get this deal either through WeaKnees or TiVo, just make sure to ask about it before you plop down your money.

Also, keep in mind that Series3 TiVo units will not work with DirecTV or any other satellite provider, so this is only a good deal if you were planning on switching to cable anyway.

Hauppauge has released yet another TV tuner intent on making the tuner you bought just a few months ago feel jealous.

The WinTV-HVR-3000 is the company's first "tri-mode" tuner, meaning it can capture digital satellite, analog cable, or Freeview TV signals on a PC. You can also listen to FM, digital DVB-T or DVB-S radio.

The PCI card features hardware MPEG-2 encoding, and comes with software for recording from a VCR or camcorder in MPEG-1 or MPEG-2.

While this isn't a "triple tuner" card as some sites are suggesting, it does allow you to capture video from three distinct types of sources. And if you're capturing a digital and an analog signal simultaneously, you can flip back and forth between the two recordings, so it's more like a tri-mode, dual tuner card.

It also comes with what looks like Hauppauge's standard IR remote. The HVR-3000 is available now for under £100.

Back in May, I moved to a new house and picked up a new Sky+ deal with BSkyB, which came with the newer box with increased capacity (and improvements on the recent software updates). I managed to flog my old box on eBay for £50 and pretty much made back the installation costs at the same time.

However, within a month of the new installation, I started losing channels all over the place, and the only thing which could bring them back was a channel re-scan or a complete planner re-build and a forced software download. So, BSkyB sent out an engineer, who then replaced my Thomson box with a new one.

Over the past few months, the problem has repeated itself, and I've continually found myself bereft of channels, and having to go through the re-scan on a fairly regular basis. When I spoke to the technical support at BSkyB last month about the issue, they sent a stronger update signal to the box, which seemed to cure the problem.

However, the cure was temporary, and the problem resurfaced last week -- so I called up BSkyB and asked them to send out an engineer. The chap who arrived was a pleasant character, and offered to replace not only the box itself, but the LNB on the dish. He even dug out a Pace box from his van for me.

Unfortunately, the Pace box died as he was setting it up, and I had to make do with an Amstrad box. Unfortunately, it means that I've lost a bunch of recordings, some of which I was planning to write about on our siste website, TV Squad.

I'm hopeful that the problem will vanish for good now, but you never can tell. I'll keep everyone posted on the fate of the Amstrad unit, and I'll live in hope that one day a Pace Sky+ box will be mine.

1. Sky HD. If there's one present I'd really love someone to buy me this Christmas, it's BSkyB's news HD service. It's a Sky+ PVR with 160GB of storage capacity (around 80 hours) and it displays tons of Sky's content in glorious HD (presuming you have an HD capable TV. It'll cost you £299 for the box, £60 for installation and an extra £10 per month on top of your subscription, depending on the channels you already receive. More: www.sky.com/hd

2. Topfield TF5800PVR 160GB Freeview PVR. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of ordering one of these top-notch Freeview PVRs for the purposes of my job. It's a twin-tuner unit with a 160GB hard drive and a fairly easy-to-use setup and EPG. The only drawbacks are a slow reaction time on the remote, but it also has the added bonus of a USB connection, which comes in handy for moving videos around on to portable devices. You should expect to pay around £250, but it's worth every penny. More: Amazon UK.

3. Telewest TV Drive. If you're an NTL or Telewest customer in the UK, and you don't yet have a PVR, but you're sick of their basic on-demand service, you should consider treating yourself this Christmas by upgrading to TV Drive. It has a twin tuner, 80 hour capacity, 8-day EPG and series link facility. Oh, and it does HD too. Subscriptions start at an additional £10 per month, with no connection fee. More: Telewest UK.

4. Humax PVR800T PVR. If the Topfield doesn't take your fancy, you might want to consider the Humax PVR800T. It has pretty much all the same function as the Topfield TF5800, but with a slightly smaller HDD (80GB) and can only record one Freeview channel at a time. Expect to pay around £130.

1. iRecord. Why pay for downloadable TV and movie content from iTunes if you can record you favorite programming right onto your iPod? Thanks to the iRecord, you can record the latest episode of Lost and have it automatically formatted and transferred to your iPod for later viewing. At $1.99 a show, and even more for movies, the savings can add up quick. The iRecord is priced at $199.99 and can be purchased through www.irecord.com.

2. Simplifi Digital AV Expander. One of the biggest problems that I ran into when I was building my Media Center Edition PC was the lack of options to connect video game systems to the computer. MCE inherently creates a two second buffer for all video input through a tuner card, but the Simplifi Digital AV Expander allows you to connect your systems to MCE and bypass the delay all together. If you want to pick up one of these for a friend or yourself, then check out Simplifi Digital's website, where you can get the card for $99.

3. ExpressVu HD PVR Plus System. ExpressVu has long been one of the larger satellite providers in Canada, and what would a TV provider be without a PVR? This PVR is can record up to 180 hours of SD TV as well as record HD TV, it features two tuners so you can record two programs at once, and it also sports picture-in-picture. The ExpressVu HD PVR Plus can be bought via Bell ExpressVu's site for as cheap as $325 CDN.

4. Creating a Digital Home Entertainment System with Windows Media Center. You may be asking yourself what a book is doing on this list, but let me say that this book is great if you are looking at building a Media Center Edition PC. Although this book does not deal with Vista, a lot of the background information will still be valid. Topics include deciding on the purpose of you media center, recommendations for hardware, and of course using the Media Center interface. List price for the book is $29.99, but you should be able to find it cheaper on Amazon.com.

CrunchGear is reporting that EchoStar is set to launch some sort of device that will let users archive content recorded on their Dish Netowrk PVRs. Allegedly, you'll be able to have a "virtually unlimited" number of stored programs.

It's not clear if this is some sort of online network storage product or a system for copying recordings onto your PC hard drive.

Any way you look at it, EchoStar could use some good news. This weekend, as many as 900,000 EchoStar subscribers will lose access to ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox signals, with EchoStar under a court order to cease offering distant signal channels. EchStar has signed a deal with National Programming Service, which could allow some customers to recieve network channels from outside of their broadcast area.

Placeshifting is becoming a popular phenomenon as people increasingly want to take their TV everywhere they go using something like a Slingbox.

But what if you didn't need a Slingbox and could have a portable TV that could receive your subscription TV service from anywhere? Well DirecTV are trying to do just that with the DirecTV SAT+GO!

The Sat+GO! has a 70s brown color scheme and has a fold away briefcase design making it a handy portable device for watching your DirecTV satellite TV subscription. However, there is one problem (other than the colors) -- you better be facing south.

The lid of the device looks to be the satellite dish meaning that to get the best reception you need to be pointing it towards the satellite which could be a bit annoying.

The Sat+Go! portable TV has not yet been released and specific details on the device are very thin on the ground.

For those of you that don't want to wait there is already a similar third party product available called the SatCom PASSPort. This is just a portable satellite dish, so no TV, but at least you can point the satellite in the right direction and keep the TV pointing the way you want to.

How's this for irony?

Digital Spy's regular reviewer Dek Hogan set his Sky+ box to record the BBC's Watchdog show, a consumer affairs programme aimed at targeting rogue traders and such like.

However, the box failed to record the show.

Presenter Nicky Campbell cited the example of one unlucky user who had worked his way through 11 boxes (I'm currently on my second box, V2 box -- I went through two hard drives in a year on my V1 box).

As Dek says, it might be worth running your old Sky+ box in to the ground before upgrading to Sky+ HD and uncovering the world of bugs which still seem to be out there.

Can't I go one day without posting something about Nielsen? First the ratings company postpones its promised commercial-rating system, then TiVo offers to step in, and just the other day Nielsen redefined the meaning of the word "live." Oh yeah, and they started tracking PVR users.

Now Nielsen plans to start tracking VOD ratings, starting December 11th. Cable and satellite operators are offering more and more content via VOD, including an increasing amount of network programming. Nielsen ratings should help service providers to set advertising rates for commercials associated with video-on-demand content.

While the last thing we need is to see more advertising creep into VOD, I'm all for anything that will give service providers a good reason to expand the content available to time-shifting viewers. And I can only imagine that Nielsen will find a large number of viewers with access to such content do indeed enjoy time-shifting. While we can't all be early adopters and quickly adapt to using new technology like PVRs and video-on-demand to replace traditional prime time viewing, in my recent interview with researcher Bruce Leichtman, he suggested that the primary reason more people don't use these technologies is simply that they aren't familiar with them. The more available they become, the more familiar they will become.

Here's a little news snippet we missed last week: apparently, Sky+ subscriber number have continued to climb in the UK over the last quarter.

According to financial reports, BSkyB's digital satellite subscribers in the UK increased to 8.26 million, with a growth of 82,000.

However, Sky+ households increased 139,000 over the quarter to 1.69million. THe company also claims over 96,000 homes in the UK now have Sky+ HD, but the Sky+ numbers and Sky+ HD numbers are thought to be a combined figure.

Overall profits at BSkyB have dropped due to an increase in expenses, but the massive jump in Sky+ PVR users will be encouraging to Rupert Murdoch and co.