http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
DRM sucks balls.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Great post. Having used TiVO and currently am using Media Center I concur with just about everything here. TiVO is for folks who want something incredibly easy to use. Media Center is significantly more robust and does so much more than activities related to TV shows. Once you drop in 3rd party software like MediaBrowser you can take your entertainment to a whole new level.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
For the average person to more technical,wm is hands down the way to go.

For grsndma that still htes that she had to give up her rotar phone, get a tivo.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Agree 100%. Time Warner ruined my Tivo Experience because of this. The thing that really sucks is that I already paid for the lifetime subscription before I knew that the "copy once" flag is on 24/7 on 99.9999% of channels. If I knew this prior to buying the Tivo, I would have never bought it. Tivo NEEDS to be straight with customers regarding this severe limitation. ]]>Aug 5th 2010 1:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
So with TWC+Tivo, I can't save those games on my computer for offline viewing at all?]]>Aug 5th 2010 1:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 1:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
DRM does suck majorly but different recorders and place shifting devices that can record? Wouldn't that be able to bypass most of the nonsense people go through with DRM content? This isn't part of my nerd spectrum but I was under the impression that Monsoon Hava Titanium could record to an external HDD while controlling your DVR.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOrRe2ujB0]

I could be wrong about this but I think there are a number of PSD's (place shifting devices) that do this...]]>Aug 5th 2010 5:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/If you had a Mac, you could use iTivo to get anything you want off of it. Heck, an experimental setting will even strip the commercials out. I'm sure there has to be something like that for the PC out there somewhere...

http://code.google.com/p/itivo/]]>Aug 5th 2010 6:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 6:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/(:
sorry, had to do it!]]>Aug 6th 2010 5:07AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
The Tivo device limits sharing of copy-protected shows by not allowing them to be transferred. The only way to get around this is to hack the Tivo itself... which is more difficult on the newer models because of the anti-hacking stuff incorporated in there. (Series1 (and maybe 2?) was easy to hack.. since then it requires ROM replacements, etc).]]>Aug 6th 2010 9:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 11th 2010 3:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 13th 2010 4:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
So, in light of my original comment...

When are we going to se a showdown between all the major content providers' own DVR offerings? In my area we've got Charter, Dish Network, DirecTV and U-Verse. I'm willing to ditch Dish Network for a service with a better/easier DVR offering, but not willing to shell out for a standalone DVR like TiVo or Windows Media Center.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Yes. The big failure point for Tivo is the fact that you can't really use it for Sattelite cable. Tivo doesn't have any means to record HD from Dish or DirecTV.

Using Tivo basically means you are stuck with your local landline cable monopoly.

The basic conclusions are obvious. The DIY option will be much more powerful and the appliance will be nice and simple to deal with.

Comparisons between the various appliance PVRs would be much more meaningful. (Tivo vs. Dish vs. DTV vs. terrestrial cable)]]>Aug 5th 2010 2:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/as someone who uses a DirecTV DVR, i can tell you it is a joy to use with one exception.

want to record something? one button and it's recording.
want to record the whole series? press same button again and viola, now the whole series is marked.
want to set you recording defaults to always start a set amount of time early, or end late? no problem, you can set defaults for your recordings easily.
recording a live event? the dvr will warn you it might run over and ask if you want to add an extra 30 minutes to the record time.
want to see your recorded shows? one button press and the are all listed.
easch show that has multiple episodes recorded is automatically turned into a folder and each show is listed by DATE inside the folder which is opened by moving up/down to it and pressing "select", with the newest show listed first.
want too mark something to keep regardless of recording defaults? press the blue button when on that particular show, done.

and the newest thing i love, is streaming from a DVR to another rooms regular set top box, no additional dvr needed.
However if you have mutiple DVR's, it will combine all the shows on them into ONE list instead of multiple lists.

about the only thing i dont like about the DTV DVR is there is no way to easily offload from the dvr to a portable format.
but that is more the content providers than DTV.
i can however stream from my dvr to my computer via network, and remote scheduling is a breeze.


all in all, in comparison to the craptastic cable company boxes i've used (mediacom), and the ones my parents have (Time Warner), and the Tivo i got rid off due to it just basically sucking ass, this is the best DVR i've used.

]]>Aug 5th 2010 4:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Those are DVRs, those are sources. The problem with comparing a cable DVR vs Dish (for example) is not everyone can make that choice. Then many cable DVRs vary by market. It is nearly impossible to give any useful comparisons. Now a Dish vs DirecTV would be interesting, but first I'd have to convince my editor to sign two contracts just for a feature.]]>Aug 5th 2010 4:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/I stick with my Xbox 360 and Netflix streaming

Props to the well written post]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/I'm right with you man. I'm holding out hope for that tuner. ]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 1:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
For more accurate channel changes, I'm using DVBLink with a channel change utility that issues commands over serial. It's not an ideal solution, but it is more than adequate. ]]>Aug 5th 2010 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 2:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
The process may be a little bit of a bother but the result you end up with is at least fully in your control unlike what some people here are experiencing with cable card based solutions. The main thing about HD-PVRs is that they are still a bit expensive when compared to their CableCard counterparts. On the other hand, they are readily available.

The h264 compression is also a handy thing. It increases your effective storage space by 4x.

...and no you can't upgrade the storage in a Tivo as much as you can a PC. Not even close. (looks down at 5x SATA hot swap bay)]]>Aug 5th 2010 3:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Analog "capture" cards are a pain if you ask me. Yes the end result is nice.

I too have a SATA RAID.. a little more than 4TB. I will say that everything on it is legal.]]>Aug 5th 2010 3:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
If I can't watch a recording in ANY room of the house (nevermind putting it on the iPad or Archos) then I really might as well just be using a Tivo.]]>Aug 5th 2010 3:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
DirecTV's whole-home DVR system is supposed to be pretty good, but I haven't tried it, or have much of a need for it. Direc2PC does work OK too.]]>Aug 5th 2010 3:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
You can buy small form factor PC's - they can be tiny. And they can look amazing. They also don't have to cost a ton of money. A dual tuner HTPC with a 1TB in storage can be built for $500 easy. With that you can get a Blu-Ray drive and all the features a person commonly wants.

Compare that to TiVO (or most offerings from cable companies) and the box pays for itself after a few years. Most STB's are around $16/month - that makes your PC Media Center a break even proposal at around 2 years.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Considering how microscopic and yet functional HTPCs have become, the real question is why do we need an Xbox at all.

Or why isn't the Xbox a HTPC w/ a decent GPU for gaming? Why is it mostly just a console?

Perhaps that will be answered if we finally get a real Xbox update this century, and not just a slim-down of 2005 technology.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/They should license their interface to all these networked media streamers manufactures cause they usually suck.
Also maybe develop an OS for the sigma/realtek SoC kinda processors.
I think the could reall bring media streamers to the average living room.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Because then you wouldn't buy a dedicated PC, or build up your Desktop machine, as well as they would have many more hackers to the XboxDVR.

Lets see....MS sells a bunch of Xboxes. They sell a bunch of Media Center-enabled OS licenses. Why would they cut into either one of these revenue streams? In addition to ticking off their OS hardware partners? If MS built this all in one, PC makers would flip out as MS would now be competing with them, just as PMP makers flipped out when MS released a Zune (but hardware vendors would actually care about this because, unlike PMPs, they are actually getting sales).
Microsoft is all about having a symbiotic relationship with hardware vendors. They only ventured into hardware in peripherals (which they were in before the market was formed), PMPs (where Apple owned 70 percent of the market), and Gaming (only competing against PC maker Sony, as Nintendo is all about gaming).
Ticking off hardware makers is not what Microsoft does, which is why they are not building WindPhone 7 device. ]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
I have the same complaint. The stuff the ticks me off about the XBox are so easy to fix.

First, allow more video formats. Support streaming ISO's, MKV's, VOB's, etc. I don't want to use PlayOn to stream my collection of MKV's to my XBox. Add some freaking codecs already.

Second, through in a tuner card. If you made it an accessory (like the original HD-DVD drive) I bet you would get people to buy it. Charge $100, give us 2 HD tuners and we would be in heaven.

I don't expect my XBox to provide as good of an experience as a dedicated HTPC but it certainly could close the gap dramatically with a few additions.]]>Aug 5th 2010 6:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/The xbox 360 is exactly what you describe, the only thing that's missing from it is better playback software and recording functionality. The former is something Microsoft (and Sony with the PS3) has been working on for the last few years, the latter is obvious: adding a 4x tuner and a phat HDD to the the xbox 360 would make it twice as expensive, and no-one would buy it just for games anymore.

As for the GPU: when the xbox 360 was new, the GPU was pretty decent and about as powerful as they could make it without making the hardware even less reliable. Every console generation has to last at least somewhere around 10 years (almost 6 have passed already), so it's only natural that HTPC's now have better GPU's. The whole idea of a console is that it is a fixed platform that doesn't change as fast as generic PC hardware, so you don't have to upgrade or replace it all the time.]]>Aug 6th 2010 7:56AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
Because if you're playing a game while a TV show is about to record, you don't want to have to choose between the two. What you really want is a server that does all the recording and hosts all your media content and feeds that to any PC or Xbox that you have on your network. That would be far more efficient in the long run.]]>Aug 11th 2010 11:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
One point I have to disagree with in the review is how easy it is to take Media Center shows on the go. It was another reason I fell in love with MCE years ago - no software is required to pull the video off the device, you just browse to the Recorded TV folder and copy what you want over to your local PC and take it on the go. Extremely convenient. ]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/and you just started using it, and havent gone through any of the terrible update processes, nor had the guide become unavailable for months on end, or had to deal with the fact that it is written in c and most people who write plug-ins dont use that language, so it takes forever to get plug-ins updated when the main program is updated.

MythTV is for the people who want the idea of a dvr, but mostly want to fuck around and say "look what i can do for FREE" while continually having to rewrite, redo, and wait for shit to be made available in working order.

I gave up on MythTv long ago.
]]>Aug 5th 2010 4:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 12:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 1:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Aug 5th 2010 1:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
I've had the TP in service since it came out and while I don't use it heavily, I haven't had one problem with reliability.]]>Aug 5th 2010 2:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
If you are having that many reboots you may want to contact Tivo or tivodesign on Twitter.]]>Aug 5th 2010 6:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/Ouch. I have a TiVo HD with a SD TV (LOL), and it works fine, except for the crash about every once a month from trying to view my Netflix queue. However, the Netflix browsing does suck, and it appears it hasn't changed in the least since the TiVo HD. ]]>Aug 14th 2010 12:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/tivo-premiere-vs-windows-7-media-center/
WTF.]]>Aug 5th 2010 12:41PM