Hands-on with the TiVo Series3! – Engadget Well what better day than the day that Apple is rumored to make their big push into the living room (note, rumored) for TiVo to come out wiht their big Series 3 announcement. Dave Zatz has the best post out as usual writing over at Engadget.
This unit is a PVR lover’s wet dream. Dual HD CableCARDs, THX certified sound, 300 hours of regular record time or 32 hours of HDTV record time. Remote scheduling from tivo.com. More home media stuff (photos, internet, radio, etc.). And the same rock solid reliability and intuitive TiVo design that you have grown to love.
So what don’t I like about it? Well it looks like this unit is locked down like Fort Knox. Once again the assholes over at the MPAA, RIAA, HollywoodIAA and CableLabsIAA win again. It looks like TiVoToGo is not being supported in this unit or external hard drives. So there goes your portability and expandability.
From Zatz: “TiVo continues to develop and evaluate Multi-Room Viewing, TiVoToGo, and external hard drive support in relation to CableLabs certification. While we recognize certain aspects of this issue are largely out of TiVo’s control, the absence of these value-added features makes the MSRP more difficult to swallow.”
Will I buy one myself? Likely not. Personally I’m more interested in multi room solutions that this unit does not address but that Microsoft’s Media Center will do with XBox 360 Extender units due out early next year and I’ve already got a pretty good quad tuner TiVo with my DirecTV HDTV TiVo box. Davis Freeberg already bought his this morning though and I suspect a lot of other folks will be hot on the phone this morning as well.
You can follow more of the TiVo news today here at TechMeme.