Issues Heating Up With the New TiVo DVD-Rs
First, to your left is a sample of the new UI for the Humax DVD TiVo unit that just came out at the very attractive price point of $399 after rebate. (Am I kicking myself around the block for not waiting? Answer: yes!)

Now for the controversy. Over at PVRBlog, they are seeing red over the fact that you cannot burn DVDs if you use the Home Media option. Here is an excerpt:

"TiVo need to put in GIANT RED LETTERS a disclaimer regarding using DVD-R TiVos and Home Media feature: DISCLAIMER: While you can view content recorded on a standard Series2 TiVo on a TiVo with DVD burning functionality using the TiVo Home Media function, you CANNOT burn this content to a DVD. I imagine that there are other people are going to purchase a DVDR enabled TiVo assuming that this would work. It doesn't and neither TiVo, Humax, or Pioneer have been very upfront about this."

Another PVRBlog person commented: "This has nothing at all to do with DRM. Nothing in the least. It is technical. I've had an 810H for a year, and I've talked to people at TiVo about this a few times. The issue is simple. Standard TiVos do not record in a DVD compliant format. The MPEG settings are different, and the audio encoding is wrong as well. The units would need to transcode the content, and that's beyond the capabilities for the HW to do reasonably."

And Bill says: This is why things like TiVo have never really been on my radar. We have worked out 99% of these incompatibilities already on computers, yelled down Microsoft's intent to bring them back up again in Media Edition, and already have a stable platform for doing almost anything TiVo can do. By God, you retire a computer and instead of giving it to your cousin, stick a TV tuner on it and instant TiVo+. You want more recording time? Stuff a larger hard drive in there with no hassles. Create DVDs? Sure, even Dual Layer if you want, with a DVD burner. Heck, you can use the computer side of your "CiVo" to edit your captures so they trash all the commercials. What is the matter with you people? We had this whole big multimedia thing 10 years ago when the idea was absolute Ka-Ka and everybody jumped on it. Now that we really can do it, what happens? "TiVo.. TiVo... TiVo...." Youre absoluetly nuts. I have 6 computers running 24/7. Anywhere from 4 to all 6 record TV shows, depending on what's happening any particular day or week. (If you read Alice's post last week, you can actually just run 6 tuner cards in just one PC but that technology is post me.) And I have one-click capture scheduling from an online TV Listing host. FOR FREE!!! I've burned 400 or 500 DVDs with clean TV clips or movies. Is there something here that a TiVo can do that I'm missing?

--More from PVRBlog


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