Record Hdtv

Hello my name is Jim, and I am a TiVoholic.

It's true, and I'm probably one of the originals. My love affair with TiVo started back when it debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2000. Back then I was hosting Fresh Gear on TechTV, and I did both the first preview and the first in-depth review of TiVo and Replay just as they arrived.

The unit went back shortly after the review aired. But I was hooked. I purchased one at list price—$799 with the lifetime service agreement—and haven't looked back since. Since then, as a DirecTV customer, I've faithfully purchased follow-on products. I also posted one of the first reviews of the combination DirecTV TiVo, picked up a Series II DirecTiVo when it came out, and have been drooling over the prospect of the HD version for months. Ominously for TiVo, the official name for this new box is the "DIRECTV HD DVR," without the word TiVo anywhere in the name.

Whatever it's called, we've been dying to provide you with a solid hands-on review of the HD TiVo since it shipped earlier this year. However, both DirecTV and TiVo declined to make a unit available. And at $1,000 list with very little price-break on-line, it was even too rich for my TivoAddicted blood. I tried (and failed) to build a PC-based substitute around ATI's All-In-Wonder HD. Then, a few weeks ago, I broke out in a cold sweat while perusing the Craigslist online classified site. A cancelled installation forced a home theater installer to dump a brand new HD TiVo for just $800. No shipping, no tax. That was good enough for me. Don't tell my wife, but I capitulated and bought the darn thing. At last, I could pause and record live HDTV just like regular programming. Oh, and I could do this review of the box too—though that was a much lower priority.

What is TiVo? In case you've been living under a rock for years, TiVo delivers what I consider the best software for digital video recorders (DVRs. Unlike a VCR, these record TV to an internal hard drive and make it easy to record a single show or an entire season. They also buffer live TV: Once you've paused a football game to answer the phone or feed the baby, and fast forwarded past a commercial break, you'll never go back to watching live TV.

Many companies now offer digital video recorders. You can usually rent a DVR built by Scientific Atlanta or Motorola from your cable company. Dish Network offers both a standard and a high-definition DVR (Our Loyd Case reviewed the HDTV-capable Dish Player 921 recently). And ReplayTV, the loyal opposition, still sells its own DVRs too. The hardware is mostly interchangeable. Over-the-air DVRs from ReplayTV and TiVo combine hardware and software. They take in an analog video feed, digitize it to disk, and then give you at-will playback. Service-specific DVRs such as this DirecTV using are system dependent, as they take a proprietary digital cable or satellite signal and store it directly without re-encoding. That translates into better quality than the over the air models.

Despite the competition, TiVo still rules. Its software is just so much more powerful—and easier to use—than any other DVR's. Even techno-averse users, like my wife, have embraced the TiVo. And my five year old was practically born with a TiVo remote in his hand--he will never know a life of destination viewing. Commercials, in fact, have been banned in our house.

But is the new HDTV TiVo really as good as past products? Is it worth a thousand bucks? Here's what I found.

TiVo has always included just about everything you need to configure and set up a DVR, and this new HD version is no different. Along with the standard phone cable and splitter, composite video and audio cable, and S-Video cable, there's also a component-video cable, an HDMI-to-HDMI cable and an HDMI-to-DVI cable. The only thing missing--an optical digital cable for sending multi-channel audio to your home-theater receiver.

If you're familiar with the standard DirecTV DVR, the new HDTV version looks almost exactly the same. The gray front panel includes a fistful of buttons, an IR receiver on the right, and a card slot on the left. But a closer look shows that this is not your father's TiVo. A horizontal display in the center shows which video resolution the TiVo is sending.

A button labeled "format" lets you cycle through the four supported video modes: 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Apart from the frightening concept of a "format" button on a hard-drive based appliance, it makes switching modes on the fly easy, especially compared with other receivers. My Samsung SIR-T160, for example, uses a tiny switch in the back, and VOOM's settings are tucked away inside an obscure setup menu.

<!--Image: Format button.jpg Title: Front TiVo Controls Caption: The HD TiVo includes a format button that changes output from SD to ED and then to HDTV, along with enough other buttons to run the device without the remote.

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You can even switch modes using the remote, by simply pressing the "Up" direction on the round four-way rocker switch at the top (more on the remote later).

Back Panel But when you get to the back, things really start looking different. Unlike earlier TiVos, which could simultaneously drive three separate televisions (via the two composite outputs and a TV-tuner out), the HD DVR looks anemic. There are only three output options: SD-based composite/S-Video, component, and HDMI. Lack of a DVI port isn't much of a problem, as a video-only HDMI to DVI cable is included in the box. But the box needs a VGA output too. This TiVo is replacing my Samsung SIR-T160, which does include a VGA port along with DVI and component.

Even worse, except for 480i mode, only one output device is active at a time. Another one of my TiVos drives two separate TVs&#151;one in the kitchen and the another in the playroom. That lets me move from room to room while still watching the same show. The HD DVR won't allow that.

What a disappointment! My Samsung receiver simultaneously outputs both an HD signal (on either component, VGA or DVI) and a down-sampled 480i signal via the composite jack. This lets me make DVD or PC copies of lower-resolution video while enjoying the high-def content on my plasma. The HD DVR won't allow that. It will drive both the plasma&#8212;via component--and a composite/S-Video device, but only when the 480i format is selected. There's simply no good reason why the TiVo can't also pump out an SD signal when an ED or HD format has been selected.

Audio options are unnecessarily limited too. Digital audio can be output only via an optical connector&#8212;there's no coax option. That can be a problem with older home-theater receivers, like mine, with limited digital audio inputs. I had to buy an optical to coax converter to get it to work right. And there's only one set of stereo analog audio output jacks, too, which means you'll have to buy a splitter or do some crazy routing if you lack either a home theater receiver with digital in or an HDMI TV.

The TiVo automatically senses when an HDMI cable is plugged in, and disables the component output. But I ran into a major problem when I tried to connect from the HDMI port to the DVI input on my Panasonic plasma. Nothing came out. I swapped cables, then connections, and even tried it with my DVI-enabled LCD desktop monitor. Nothing.

DirecTV's fine technical support had the answer&#8212;but it wasn't good. I had apparently won the home game of HDMI roulette: Somewhere between 10% and 15% of all HD DVRs made by Hughes ship with a bad HDMI port. Lucky me. After briefly trying to convince me to use component, DirecTV offered to send me a replacement. One small problem though. They still haven't figured out how to fix the HDMI port problem, which means another turn of the wheel. As of this writing I haven't received the replacement yet, but I've got a 15% chance of it being bad too. Isn't it great when you can replace your QA department with your customers? Thanks Hughes and DirecTV!

Even if you do get a good HDMI port, early returns on web discussion boards are not positive. The port seems fragile, with many users reporting color loss and other problems.

On the plus side, the HD DVR includes an over-the-air HD tuner as well&#8212;two of them to be exact. Combine that with the two satellite inputs, and you've got grand total of four tuners! You can only record two things at a time (or watch one thing and record another), but those inputs can come from any of the four tuners. Without HDMI, it was hard to really compare video quality between the DirecTV signals coming from the satellites and those compressed locally by the DVR, but they looked roughly equivalent&#8212;meaning yowza good--in both cases.

Don't think you'll be able to buy an HD DVR just for over-the-air recording, though. Without an active DirecTV connection, you can only watch&#8212;but not pause or record&#8212;over the air signals.

The back panel also includes two USB ports, along with a serial and an IR port. According to the manual, though, all are reserved "For future use." TiVo representatives claim that all the Series II functionality is in the box, including the ability to schedule recordings remotely and share recordings with others. But DirecTV has declined to enable it.

Since I was replacing a non-TiVo based HD set-top box, installation was a snap&#8212;and I had already installed two satellite drops in anticipation of this glorious day. Once I connected it all up and turned it on, the box took me through a standard, albeit somewhat lengthy, installation process.

It keeps going, and going, and going, and going.

Once the satellites have been found and recognized, you can start watching TV and selecting programs to record. There's nothing new here over the standard Series II DirecTiVos, as you can see from the main menu:

A number of nifty setup screens help you tune the system for your set:

Other video settings let you select letterbox format, decide what to do with 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen, set colors for sidebars, and so on:

After the setup and configuration, I sat down to watch some serious TV. I know, my job stinks. I recorded a wide range of programs in both high and standard definition: Everything from an HD Rufus Wainwright concert from Bravo HD to over-the-air and DirecTV-based HD football games. And despite relying on component video, I was impressed with everything I watched.

High-definition content looked tremendous, as you might expect. The Dolby Digital Audio and surround sound transformed my digital den first into a smoky concert hall and then into a football stadium. The kids were fascinated by a towering viper from an HDNet snake documentary. A special on Cirque de Soleil turned me into one of the performers. The Red Sox looked even more dominant in HD. And the tremendous flexibility of being able to watch HD on my terms, as it were, was worth every cent. The fast-forward, slow, and rewind buttons were especially useful with HD content. Unlike with a standard definition TiVo, HD baseball and football were actually watchable at 2X speeds, because of the additional picture information in the HD format. And roll-your-own slow motion replays are particularly vivid and crisp. Who needs Tim McCarver and Al Leiter? I knew that game 6 ball was a home run before almost anyone: my replay clearly showed it hitting a fan's chest, and I rewound it three or four times to make sure.

The HD DVR does a pretty good job of up-sampling standard definition content too. Although freeze frames were somewhat blocky, overall standard definition TV looked okay. And that's important, because DirecTV's HD lineup is paltry, with only a handful of full-time HD networks (but six or more HD football games each Sunday for Direct Ticket). That should change, though, because DirecTV just reengineered two satellites from providing internet service to delivering more HD channels. They launch next year.

The unit includes a 250 gigabyte hard drive, which probably explains the high price. According to DirecTV, that'll hold up to 250 hours of regular TV, or 30 hours of high definition content. If you watch a lot of HD (and if you're laying out the big bucks for this unit, you will), those 30 hours will go by pretty quickly. Still, in more than a week of watching, I had an awful lot of content saved before shows started cycling off. And open-source purists will be happy to note that the unit runs on Linux, with a GNU license included in the back of each manual.

That said, it's not perfect. Switching between channels takes a bit longer than on the standard box. Disconcertingly, the system often displayed a grey interstitial screen as it moved from one channel to another. There's no "dash" key on the remote, which makes it hard to tune in OTA digital channels directly. You have to use the "advance" button (a right-pointing arrow) to substitute. And the recorder ignores DirecTV's music channels, which is a shame.

But as you would expect from a TiVo-based device, finding, selecting, recording, and watching TV is just about as easy as can be. It's much easier than programming a VCR, and everything works the way it should.

One last issue: According to the home theater installer I purchased it from, the IR port has problems in some installations. IR blasters can overload the receiver, which may make remote installation difficult. I've been using the wireless IR extenders from Radio Shack and X10, however, and haven't had any problems.

I'll be posting more pictures showing the HD TiVo's picture quality, when I get one with a working HDMI port. We'll let you know when they're up.

Love Song for a Remote One last word on using the HD DVR. It includes an elongated version of the "dog bone" or "peanut" remote that shipped with the original TiVo. This is, hands down, the best TV remote control ever built. It fits comfortably in your hand, which is where it sits most of the time, as you fast forward, pause and rewind your shows. Most of the buttons are logically laid out, and it'll control many popular televisions and home theater receivers too. I managed to configure it to control my Sony receiver, but it was unable to directly control my Panasonic plasma. Other DVR vendors need to closely study this remote&#151;if only all of them were this good.

I've got mixed feelings about the HD DVR. On the one hand, it's a TiVo, which means the software works great. If you're a TiVo addict, a DirecTV customer, and you have HDTV, this unit is for you. If you're using another HDTV DVR&#8212;particularly from a cable TV company&#8212;it's worth considering a switch.

But it's not without flaws. The poorly implemented HDMI port gives me pause, particularly because the company hasn't fixed the problem, and the long-term viability of the port itself is questionable.

It's also way too expensive. When an HDTV PC card costs $200, and 250 gigabyte hard drives can be had for about the same price, $1,000 sounds like gouging to me, especially since a DirecTV monthly fee is tacked on. I also wish that it had more connections on the back, and that it supported some of the newer Series II TiVo features, such as internet accessibility and remote programming.

Despite these reservations, my addiction has risen to a new height (or depth) of depravity. Now that I've used the DIRECTV HD PVR for a while, I'm hooked. I'm never giving this one up! You'll have to pry the remote out of my cold dead hands. It's a good thing I bought it with my own money.

Product: DIRECTV HD DVR Company: DirecTV (manufactured by Hughes, with TiVo software) Price: $1,000 list, $900 online. Pros: Schedule, pause, fast forward, and rewind in HD quality video; four tuners for DirecTV and over the air recording. Cons: 15% HDMI ports are DOA; expensive; lacks advanced TiVo features. Summary: Overpriced, underpowered, but still the only game in town for DirecTV customers, and a reason to switch for other HDTV users. Score:

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.

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