Dead TiVos and demand for new ones

Matt Hinrich's story of The Day the Plip Plops Stopped, about his dead standalone TiVo mentions a point that has been making the rounds recently. DirecTV has sold so many new DirecTiVo units for the $99 promotion that they can't meet demand.

I've had regular cable + a TiVo for about two years and a DirecTiVo with satellite for almost two years and there's no comparison. DirecTiVo offers features like two tuners that make program conflicts rare (and you can watch something live while something else is being recorded), the direct storage of satellite feeds means few compression artifacts and a near-DVD quality picture, and put simply, the only way to effectively manage hundreds of channels of content displaying at all hours of the day and night.

I'm hopeful DirecTV sees this demand as a great way to get new customers and keep current ones happy, and keeps the $99 promotion after the new year (when it was supposed to run out).

Comments

[Roger Benningfield]

Matt: I'd like to switch over to DirecTV and the DTiVo, but it's just not worth it at this point... as long as DTV continues to disallow the HMO on their boxes, I'll be sticking with stand-alones and Dish.

[Scott]

As a new DirecTiVo owner, the dual tuner and all-digital quality has won me over from the digital cable and stand alone DVR.

The HMO option would be great, but as one of the $99ers it was the best decision I could make.

[Carl]

How does the dual tuner work? If you have a multi-room setup, I take it the dual tuner takes up on of the satellite slots for having multiple receivers? If so doesn't this make it difficult to have a multi-room setup where you can watch different things on each tv if the Tivo is taking up 2 of these?

[Matt Haughey]

The dual tuner works by being treated like an extra room I guess, it takes two input lines from the satellite. If you've currently got a two-line dual LNB unit with a multi-room system, you'll likely need to upgrade to a triple LNB system and run an extra line to where the DirecTiVo will be.

[Mike]

Matt, there was a nice article about Tivo and it's survival in the WSJ.. I wonder if you've seen it?

[paul]

The killer omission from the DirecTiVo (at least for me) is the fact that it can't record OTA signals. Since I live in a market that doesn't have DirecTV locals, that means I can't TiVo Alias, 24, Smallville, or any of the other network shows I want... whereas my standalone Series 1 does that just fine.

[carl]

I made the plunge.. after itching for a Tivo for sometime now I made the jump to noy only a Tivo but DirecTV.

$99 for a Series2 DirecTivo receiver, multi-satellite dish, and 2 slimline standard receivers (3 room setup).

So by the end of next week... i'll be a Tivo convert.

[Dan Isaacs]

You need a multi-swith to split the dual-LNBs for use in a mulit-room situation. at least a 2x3, provide dyou are only needing the 2 for the tivo and one for the other room.

My Tivo dying scares me. That's a $350 investment. Dying after a little more than a year would suck. And sat just isn't practical for me with 4 TVs and Road Runner. I'd be paying %50 more for TV/Internet, and would have to run more cable. Ugh.

[samuelad]

I just moved from a metropolitan area to a more rural area with a job transfer. It did not occur to me to ask the real estate agent if cable was available. It wasn't. So I, too, took the plunge and got two Series 2 Tivos and one plain old RCA DirecTV box. I can already tell that my failure to ask about cable was fortuitous.

However, one word of caution: make sure that you tell the installers exactly what you want in the way of cabling for a multi-room DirecTivo system. The initial installer failed to run an extra coax cable for the dual tuner of the second DVR box, and out right refused to run an extra phone jack despite the retailer's insistence that this would happen. And the first multi-switch that the retailer provided did not have enough outputs for all of the necessary cables. I had to raise a bit of a stink to get things right, but everything is working fine now.

[Patrick]

Here's what's holding me back from Directivo, as much as I'd like to take the plunge:

• 4.0 features, specifically folders and Home Media
• HDTV reception - I'd have to buy an OTA tuner and get it rigged up... right now, I can pay $5 a month for a cable box that does it for me
• my cable modem - and my Vonage service
• my shortsightedness running only one coax line to all of my rooms

When an HD DirectTivo that only runs on one cable comes out, and I can find a competitor to my cable modem service that makes sense (DSL is more expensive... and it would be senseless for us to have Vonage and a POTS line,) then I'll be able to make the plunge. Two tuners would be incredible though!

[carl]

I've already made the switch and it's worth it. The Tivo is great, and integrated perfectly. It's awesome.

The biggest drawback in my mind is the HDTV issue, not getting local channels and the need to combine OTA signals and DirecTV HD signals into one easy to use package in order to get HD local channels.

I made the switch and kept my cable model. Nobody ever said you have to have cable tv in order to have cable internet access.

As for the "only one cable" issue... if you want dual tuners you pretty much need two cables. It uses 2 lines out of the LNB. So you need... two cables.

Frankly the trouble of having to run another cable is well worth the luxury of having a dual tuner Tivo system. It's excellent!