Home Media Option?

[MarcBate]

It would be nice if the upcoming HD Tivo would let users subscribe to Tivo's Home Media Option for those of us already with Tivo2's so we can use the multi-room viewing and remote scheduling, and the long-awaited ability to burn your recorded Tivo programs to DVD via your PC which they say will be possible with an update to the Home Media Option this fall.

Has anyone heard anything on this, and if they're not allowing it, is it because of a technical reason?

[cnsf]

See http://www.tivocommunity.com

They've been debating this for many, many months....

No one can figure out DirecTV's sluggishness on this.

[Lee L]

Based on what the TiVo people said in a conference call at CES and on some results of people expirementing with the SW on DirecTivos, it does not appear to be a technical problem.

[cnsf]

It's known that it's definitely a business issue.

No one can understand the reasoning though.

My thought is that they don't want to tick off programming owners that already dislike Tivo because of advertising reasons.

Tivo itself does not rely on those relationships the same way.

[scottchez]

I think its all about Money.

Direct TV will loose money as they will have to hire many new CSRS to answer calls and to help users support there networks.

In the link above for the Tivo Comun search on the word DELL, there you will find an idea where DELL will support the HMO. They are already selling Direct Tivos for $49.

We need to be calling DELL.

[scottchez]

Someone quoted a Hughes rep (the maker of the HD Tivo)

as saying the USB ports will be turned off. We are researching copyright rules right now and we may turn on the USB and HMO once the rule all level out and are documented mayb by the end of the year.

The fact is, there is no hardware limitations. Many have tweaked and have ran HMO on there Tivos with out issues.

Direct TV is also worried about support. Some say DELL may be the ones supporting the HMO network with there new Media PC system.

Dell is now selling Direct Tivos for $49 for new customers.

[MarcBate]

I've been a Dish subscriber for many years now, and given that they seem to only value new customers and expect their loyal customers to pay retail, and given my new HDTV purchase, I'm considering the other options.

I must say that I had the Dish 501 PVR for ~1 year and loved it...until I got a real Tivo last year, and to make a long story short, don't even use the Dish program guide, timers, or recording anymore since it is so limited by comparison. (Why doesn't Dish just work with Tivo like DirectTV does and abandon development of their own inferior system, unless they can make it do everything the Tivo service provides?)

I personally don't need support from DirectTV, so if someone can point me to some DirectTV hacker resources on how they did it with their existing, non-HD Tivos, then I'll assume I could do it with the HD Tivo, making my decision to switch to DirectTV that much easier.

Being able to burn recordings to DVD for archiving as the Tivo fills up (even after adding a second hard drive) is something I really want to be able to do.

[BurgEnder]

This is one of the reasons why I stayed with E* and picked up a couple ReplayTV 5500 series DVRs. Being able to stream content and share recording duties between rooms is very important in my household. Plus I prefer Replay's interface to Tivo's, having spent many hours with a DTivo at a cousin's home.