TiVo Series 5 Coming This Fall 178
WebGangsta writes "The rumor mill continues to grow closer and closer to reality, as The Verge is reporting the upcoming SERIES 5 TiVo will have 6 tuners, support OTA recording (an old TiVo feature being brought back), storage beyond the 2TB limit, and more. While some would say that TiVo today is nothing more than a Patent Holder (albeit a successful one), there's still a market for a cable box that doubles as a streaming player. Is hardware the future of TiVo, or should they go and just license their software to all? And don't get us started on those 'TiVo Buying Hulu' or 'Apple/Google buying TiVo' rumors... that's a different story for a different day."
Re:"Patent Holder"?! (Score:1, Interesting)
The reason that the others don't work as well is that TiVo have patents on some of the best features. For instance, when you are fast forwarding and hit Play, it goes back a little bit to account for reaction times. No-one else does this because TiVo hold the patent on it. To me, that's an obvious idea and should not be patentable.
Re:Tivo already dropped the ball (Score:2, Interesting)
I've had Tivo since 1999, but this is exactly why I unplugged my Tivo a year or so ago and it's been gathering dust. In the early days, the UI was fast and intuitive. I was happy to pay a few dollars a month, even though I could have gotten a free DVR from cable company. I spent over a decade paying my monthly subscriptions and had probably 3-4 new machines during that time.
Since I got the HD a few years back, Tivo has been painful to use because the UI is so slow, and the machine simply locks up periodically (google "Tivo gray screen of death"). What's the purpose of having a DVR that randomly dies and stops recording? I finally just decided I'd rather cut the cable cord and just stick with my HTPC. It's a shame...in the early years I thought I'd never not have a Tivo. Now I'm moving to another place soon, and AT&T is giving me a really cheap deal on a internet/TV bundle with one of their own DVR's. I've got nothing to lose by trying it.
And that, my friends, is how you go from a company with a rabidly loyal customer base to a dying company trying to claw your way back up the slope. As anyone in business knows, it's several times more expensive to attain new customers than to keep the ones you've got. Sadly, I doub that Tivo has kept enough customers to remain viable for long, unless they're coming up with some groundbreaking functionality at a reasonable price.
Re:Great, now I just need 6 cablecards (Score:4, Interesting)
My experience with Comcast from last year: before I got my newest TiVo I picked up an M-card from my local office. It came in a sleeve with a paper listing the procedure for getting it working in the TiVo, including the step "and now call us at this dedicated number where we have people who actually know what to do with a cable card." So I did, and it worked perfectly first time. Moral: sometimes, things do work.