Sunday, June 1

TiVo Tries to Stay Relevant

With the onslaught of DVRs into the mainstream market and being available through most satellite and cable companies (forgoing the need for a separate component to deal with, not to mention the remote control attachments), TiVos days have been numbered. With this latest development, the device may stick around a little while longer.

TiVo is prepping a digital video recorder that would serve as a hub for an entire house, company chief Tom Rogers confirms at the D6 Conference. He notes that current TiVos are essentially limited and can't record or offer content to more than one TV set in the home; the Wi-Fi adapter that lets the TiVo work remotely is only a part solution to the problem, Rogers says. Instead, TiVo is working to produce a version of its self-titled hubs that could give "whole-home" access, though the executive doesn't provide more details.

The dish companies have a feature that allows you to share recordings between two televisions. The two televisions actually share a dual-tuner box. I had one of these fr about a year and the only issue we ever ran into was the remote for the second TV was an RF and sometimes had to be pointed in strange directions in order to reach the box all the way in the den. But the issues, even with the RF remote, were rare.

Comcast Cable doesn't currently offer a model with that kind of capability. I don't know about the other cable companies.


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