That said, all is not rosy. Lack of Cablecard support and lack of satellite support will need to get resolved. The DRM scheme can’t be any more heinous that currently on dedicated PVRs. And the reliability factor has to get kicked up a notch. But I can see this playing out.

As for me, I love my DirecTiVo, but haven’t upgraded to the HD version because of limited HD content and concerns over DirecTV’s move to MPEG-4 next year. I also love my dedicated MCE box, with it’s dual OTA HD tuners (though my wife’s not crazy about the umpteen hours I’ve spent tweaking it). Would I buy (or even recommend) a dedicated HTPC for your average joe who’s mostly looking for a DVR? Not today. I built mine because I love projects like that. But with Vista and extenders, your average office computer (most of which are heavily underutilized) can become your media server with only a small incremental investment.

Oh, and Bruce, MCE records to a DVR-MS file, which is basically a DRM-wrapped MPEG-2 file. There are lots of apps out there to convert them to pretty much any other format you could think of.

I have been trying to get my friends to switch over to Media Center for 2 years. When they learn that they can not record HD from Cable or Satellite, they back off.

These are the people that don’t mind spending $$$$ on a nice HDTV, surround sound system, cables, etc. They have all that nice equipment and they don’t want to spend $100-$200 to upgrade an old PC to MCE because they won’t be able to record in HD. Not being able to record HD from Cable or Satellite IS a big deal. It is preventing a lot of people who care about HD from upgrading to MCE.

Yep, mostly correct. Things to note: fees for additional TiVo units are about 1/2 the usual monthly charge. So, after rebate $50 + $6.95 (I think) monthly for a second or third TiVo, fully functioning and capable of recording shows.

If you have multiple TiVos and they are networked together, you can transfer shows between them. A Law & Order SVU episode recorded on the living room TiVo can be transfered over easily to the bedroom TiVo. In fact, if you were watching it on one TiVo and paused it in the middle of the show, you’ll get an option to only transfer over from the pause. Once the show has a couple minutes transfered over, you can start watching and let it stream from TiVo to TiVo while you watch and wonder if Stabler’s going to lose his grip on his anger and will bounce the pervy perp’s head against the wall.

I did a quick search via Froogle and saw Media Center extenders were in the $200+ range (or $30-50 range + the cost of an XBox $150ish). I didn’t spend much time investigating… Is that about how much it would cost to purchse a decent MCE extender?

The Direct Tivo units are even more limited in a lot of ways then the standard Tivo, though they do have better image quality.

I have a 250 as well, I spent 1k on it when they came out (WHERE ARE THE DAM PATCHES DIRECT TV!? *shakes angry fist*)

I spent quite a bit less then that building a very nice MCE box DIY of course but still at that type of price point for HD it’s tuff for a Tivo to come out on top in a direct comparison IMO. Use something like MythTV and the cost is even lower, though the work load getting things up and going can certainly be higher.

I have always been surprised how far Tivo has stayed away from even rudimentary networking between boxes. One of many areas that Reply under Sonic blue was leading the way, course maybe that is why the conglomerates vaporized them through protracted legal feee warfare. Sad. The fact that Tivo’s won’t even do something as obvious as slave their content to each other on a LAN is heartbreaking to anyone who has even a bit of geek blood.

Feature richness does have a little steeper get going price, but even my totally non technical mother drools when I kick up a slide show of her granddaughter and start some good music while they play in the living room. People want this stuff, they just don’t care about the package and it has to be flawless once it is up particularly if it’s the son install and support syndrome :p. To the non technical the Tivo’s are pretty much almost as complicated (I’ve had to help a lot of people), anything that you can’t just run the one cable into one box or TV and get full content is really intimidating to culture that still can’t get the VCR light to stop blinking. Yeah most folks can figure it out eventually, but understanding. IR blaster, serial cables, pass through control, fire wire? Yeah, might as well have the cable company set it up, most folks answer.

Of course, at least with Myth we could get the fire wire working without a lot of dumb redundant hardware requirements and recording requirements to endlessly hair pull over. Always a trade off somewhere these days across the spectrum. To bad Tivo isn’t interested is proving the ONE solution.

Maybe vista MCE will be the one but I fear the DRM rapper is going to heavily devalue the platform in favor of getting the integration ball rolling. To the point of it not being worth bothering with (pretty much how I feel about DVD’s with content that can’t be skipped in the front, rip and trash or don’t buy at all).
I sincerely hope I’m wrong but OPM and some other anti-consumer features give me chills (please the IP owners are not going to take their ball and go home without this crap, call their bluff already).

-Griffon

http://www.tivoblog.com/index.php/archives/2004/10/02/crossbar-avcast-system-how-to-share-a-tivo-with-multiple-tvs/

My post was never intended to be a comparison of the features in a MCE box to the features in a TiVo. The only thing I was trying to do with my post was to simply point out the fact that for an average person, buying a $1200 DVR just isn’t practical.

The feature comparisons that you’ve provided are interesting. I have to agree with you that the biggest downfall of a TiVo is the inability to record two shows at once. As you know, you can kind of accomplish this by purchasing two TiVos. As I said in my post, you could purchase 3 TiVos for the price of one MCE box so doing this isn’t out of the question. Also, with MRV, you have the ability to watch any of your recordings from any TV in the house.

I’d like to correct you one comparison you’ve made. You stated that extending your TiVo to other rooms in the house is difficult without having to purchase multiple TiVos. As a matter of fact, I use a product that easily allows me to watch my TiVo from any room in the house. This solution cost me something like $90. A detailed description of my setup can be found here.

While it’s true that Dell now ships MCE boxes by default, I wonder how many people who buy a new PC intend to put it in the living room. I know that for me personally, my wife wouldn’t allow a PC in the living room . I understand that you can get an extender however; this only jacks up the price even more. BTW, how well do the extenders work?

To sum this up, I have to agree with you that a MCE box has far more features then a TiVo can ever have. That being said, I think that TiVo is a better option for the average consumer who wants a DVR that will record their favorite shows while they are at work. As you said in your post, it might be a good idea for this type of person to “rent” a cable company DVR. While this is an option, I don’t think it is a good decision because from what I’ve seen of the cable company DVRs, they are just horrible.

Once again, thanks for providing a detailed reply to my post. I truly respect and enjoy what you have to say. Keep up the great work!