TiVo quietly removes Series3 from its webstore
By Darren Murph 
posted July 30th 2008 9:35AM
posted July 30th 2008 9:35AM
[Thanks, Tim]
posted July 30th 2008 9:35AM
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Cablecards work with FIOS. There are plenty of FIOS customers using Series 3's or Tivo HD's. Check the Tivo Community Forums for more info.
What do you guys think? Is there a new model coming down the pipe?
I'm growing very tired of my directv tivo and need to upgrade to cable hd; wait or buy now?
I'm not quite sure why so many are bashing any DVR that's non-Tivo? I had a DirecTV HR10 Tivo (paid $1000 out of pocket) and it sucked HARD. It was slow, and infuriating to use because it lacked the logic to schedule adjacent overlaps when recording.
I was dreading moving over to the HR20 which is DirecTVs first in-house HD DVR due to all the bad press from Tivo users, but was blown away by its blistering speed. Navigating guides and lists was stupid fast. DTV also increased the buffer to 90 mins which was very nice when stumbling onto a show you didnt schedule. I have been very pleased with the HR20 perhaps due to my low expectations, but happy nonetheless.
So big deal about the demise of another expensive Tivo. Tivo once had this tech locked DOWN, but have squandered that dominance with never-ending feature creep and indecision. Tivo has become somewhat irrelevent over the years. I've been watching the new HD DVRs from Tivo and I've heard all about how great Tivo will be *once* they add "feature X" everyone's been holding their breath for. There's no way I'd roll the dice on Tivo this late in the game. Its likely they'll slip under the waves in the next few years leaving us with yet another component to stack in the corner with betamax, CDi, minidisc and HD-DVD.
Your information is both out of date and erroneous in places. Standalone TiVo units have many, many features the DirecTiVo units lack - and that's DirecTV's doing not TiVo, so it is irrelevant. And even then it is out of date since DirecTV has allowed a few updates since then, including support for 'Overlap Protection', aka Clipping for overlapping recordings.
As for people waiting for Feature X, you get that with *every* DVR - heck, just about every product, period. That's no way to judge a product. You can find a number of threads about people waiting for some special feature on your HR20 too. For that matter countless bad reviews of the HR20 saying the HR15 was better.
The main reason it makes me sad is now they will be even less likely to keep up with software updates. TiVo is generally pretty good about this. But they still haven't enabled M-Cards for the Series 3 like they have for TiVo HD. So I have to pay for two CableCards instead of one.
Brian Bock,
I'm with you. I bought a refurbished Series3 and a new TiVo HD at the same time when the TiVo HD was released. The CSR that I spoke to "promised" that the Series3 would get M-Card support last year. I have a M-Card in each unit and love the multi-stream on the HD. Comcast wants more money if I get a second CableCARD/M-Card for the Series3, so I passed.
Besides the fact that my wife and I love the TiVo interface, the other main reason of going with TiVos versus Comcast's HD DVR is because I knew FiOS would be coming to my area within a year and I didn't want to lose all of my previous recordings when I switched. I currently have a lot of SD content on my DirecTiVos which are essentially gone, as I don't keep it hooked up to the TV anymore. I've heard enough "horror" stories from friends who have used all the various non-TiVos that I knew my wife and I wouldn't be able to deal with the issues having come from TiVos.
You guys are ridiculous! Is Tivo better than DirecTV HD-DVR HR21? Yes, obviously. But is DirecTV programming and HD better than any service provider that works with Tivo? Yes, definitely. And does the HR21 do the job of, you know, recording shows? Yes, without fail.
so what exactly is the issue here? How much freakin' TV do y'all watch?
ps - Amazon sells the HR21 for $199 now.
i agree that the DirecTV DVR offers more HD.
that said, i'm still in withdrawal about having to forgo use of my TiVo.
so, the questions are:
has anyone heard whether TiVo will make a machine that works with all the DirecTV feeds?
and
because i still have my TiVo plugged in, at least to the power outlet, is there a way to 'split' the input feed from DirecTV and use TiVo for some of those DirecTV channels.
trying to find a golf tournament on DirecTV is a pain. i have to use the newspaper and get the particular channel. maybe it's me - but i never had any trouble with TiVo.
and i sense that DirecTV added a variable fee format just so we couldn't use the TiVo HD.
ValleyDriver
Tom -
I can't answer your Tivo ?'s, but about Golf...
Did you know that for major golf tournaments DirecTV offers FREE dedicated channels in the channels 700-720? Half are stunning HD, the others are SD, and one channel is a "mix" of multiple cameras. Some channels are dedicated to following marquee pairings every shot, while others bounce around hole-to-hole.
This alone, during the Masters and U.S. Open, made me love my DirecTV.
I think DirecTV offers this for some other sporting events too, and wouldn't be surprised if it popped up at some point during the Olympics.
If you're looking for low-profile golf tournaments, just go to
search for shows->sports->golf
I actually went without TiVo for a good bit because the cable company's DVR was the only way to watch / record HD for a while.
I would have stuck with it *except* that I couldn't edit the channel list. So you have these 1000 or so channels (probably not realistically that much but probably not that far off, either) and in the guide you had to scroll through all the channels you didn't subscribe to (porn, 50 movies channels, on-demand ad channels, spanish package channels, other tiers you may not have purchased, music channels, etc.) to get from one section to the other. So the HD stuff was up in the 800s and the other SD stuff was down in the 00s-200s and, yeah, you could type in the number to directly go to the channel but I never remembered what was what. The point being that I couldn't just page up/down to get where I wanted and there were pages of all this other crap and no way to say, "Hey, just show me the channels I subscribe to." I even asked a CSR about it and she said, "They do that so that you'll see what's on the channels you don't subscribe to and maybe it'll encourage you to purchase that programming package."
As dumb as it is, that's what got me back to TiVo. I could even live with the cable boxes weird little quirks (setting priorities was a stupid pain but I could work around a great deal of it). Those damn endless channels -they got to me.
I just created a favorite channels list with all of the channels I want to see in the guide...
the only bad part is that you have to hit "menu" --> "favorites" --> your favorite list, rather than just hitting "guide"
Royal PITA
I have 2 Series3 Tivos. I love Tivo, in general, compared to the Moto6412 craptastic box that I also have in another room. However, the Series3 interface is nice and leagues better than the competition. However, the interface is slow (bordering on non-responsive) sometimes. It literally takes 3 seconds for the Tivo menu to appear sometimes sometimes and there is additionally delay to display the Now Playing list. I don't know if this is a problem with my 2 devices or the line in general.
Maybe there is no stock as it has all been shipped to Australia ? Tivo is just launching here now and im pretty sure it was Series 3 they are promoting.
The Australian unit is based on the TiVo HD platform and it is special hardware for Australia, not the US units - it has DVB-T tuners, which is their broadcast system, not NTSC & ATSC as in the US.
Most likely they are discontinuing the Series3 because it will not work wherever cable companies move to SDV (switched digital video). As they are today, Series3 and HD Tivos will not work with SDV channels at all.
Supposedly, Tivo will offer a workaround for Series3 and TivoHD owners, but most likely, they want to minimize the customer service hassle - they'll have to deal with the countless calls of folks complaining their Tivo is broken. Furthermore, they will probably charge for the workaround, which is a bit of a stretch after getting someone to pony up $600 for a Series3.
I assume a new Tivo will be released that will support SDV as well as 2-way cablecards.
Wrong on nearly all counts.
1. It has been known for a while that they were phasing out Series3 production in favor of the new TiVo HD. I posted about it back in January: http://www.gizmolovers.com/2008/01/31/tivo-discontinues-the-series3-tcd648250b/
2. The TiVo HD is not being phased out, and it has the same issues as the S3. So that would be illogical anyway.
3. The solution to SDV is the Tuning Adapter. TiVo just released the 9.4 software update for the S3 and HD which supports the TA, and Motorola and Cisco both just had their TA's approved by CableLabs. They should be available from cable MSOs later this year.
The one thing you did get right is that TiVo is known to be working on a new box, which users have been calling the 'Series4', which will have native tru2way support. It has been mentioned on their financial calls, I'd guess that we'll see it at CES in January and it'll be released sometime in 2009.
I would have upgraded to one from my TiVo HD but, they were way too expensive.
Sigh - in the UK we're still running series 1 as they never got a hardware partner for series 2 - let alone 3 or HD.
Still my £199 lifetime sub was paid out years ago and I'm still getting listings so Tivo remain 'good guys' in my book.
Here's hoping one of the future developments will be to bring that Aussie Tivo into the UK!
I love my Series 3. The S3 stood out from cable DVRs for 1) the obvious superiority of the TiVo controls and interface and 2) it gave home theaer enthusiasts a DVR to be proud of. I'm assuming TiVo will come out with another high end DVR soon.