TiVo booth pics from CES (comcast tivo, mac transfer)
A friend is in Las Vegas and I asked him to take some shots of the TiVo booth since I didn't see much online yet. Here's a smattering of photos showing the new Comcast interface, mac transfer, and new TiVo website. They're fairly low quality phone pics, but they're good enough to get an idea how things will work:
Comcast box running TiVo (more photos after the jump)
The guide still uses the Comcast one, with a bit of TiVo functionality
Set season pass options
Serching for new programs
On Deman (VOD) menu in the TiVo interface
Selecting an On Demand show
Saved show info screen
The To Do list
Search results screen
TiVoToGo on the Mac Shots:
TiVo show transfers on a Mac
Setting up Auto-transfer to a Mac
Burning a DVD of shows with Toast
Last, but not least:
TiVo's new website?
The new Comcast stuff looks pretty good, hopefully they ironed out a lot of the kinks in the Motorola hardware (my Comcast box used to reboot randomly once a day) to go along with the new TiVo interface. Looking at the screenshots, the Comcast UI looks like it has a good deal of TiVo functionality and I'm still curious how and why current Comcast customers would ever want to upgrade to a Series 3 if this is going to be a fairly cheap add-on. Extra bonus for the On Demand stuff working within a TiVo interface (as much as I hate to say it, I do miss the VOD stuff with my Series 3).
I can't make out the last bit of the URL in that final image, but the domain is really live (http://www3-qa.tivo.com/) and looking pretty nice.
Posted by: Josh B. | January 10, 2007 at 08:13 AM
Good catch, Josh, you're right that it seems to be live already.
Posted by: Matt Haughey | January 10, 2007 at 08:28 AM
Looking at the second picture, one can clearly see the "Triangle A" and "Circle C"--which along with "Square B" is a familiar sight to anyone who currently uses a Comcast box (DVR or otherwise).
This suggests that we won't see a true TiVo remote with this box, and likely will get the same clutterific remote we have now.
Posted by: Chris | January 10, 2007 at 09:03 AM
Ne'ermind. Didn't see this pic on that Flickr set. Yea!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wahiggins3/351813615/
Posted by: Chris | January 10, 2007 at 09:08 AM
Any information on when this will be generally available? I had to give up my TiVo after five years last month when I got an LCD and the current Comcast program guide/DVR software is the pits.
Posted by: BillSaysThis | January 10, 2007 at 10:33 AM
Bill, TiVo and Comcast are saying this spring sometime at the earliest.
Posted by: Matt Haughey | January 10, 2007 at 12:25 PM
Craptastic, Matt!
Posted by: BillSaysThis | January 10, 2007 at 01:07 PM
The photos up on Flickr are just a subset of the Photos I took - the full set are here: http://www.tivolovers.com/Photos/CES2007/
Posted by: MegaZone | January 10, 2007 at 01:11 PM
Is that the much maligned Comcast Motorola box in the first picture? I thought this site said this box was crap -- but its running TiVo??? Did we see any of the freezups that have been complained about on this site? Maybe its just the software...
Posted by: Steven | January 12, 2007 at 10:11 AM
one reason why i'm still happy i bought the tivo series 3 -> audio. watching an hd show on my old comcast hd dvr vs. watching it on the series 3, the hd picture looks like same (awesome), but the audio quality has improved significantly using the series 3. (thx quality hardware?)
anyone else hearing this sound quality bump?
Posted by: lance waxer | January 12, 2007 at 10:33 AM
I saw a video on Google that shows that once you order the service they send you the famous peanut remote but it has a few more buttons for the comacst VOD and the A, B, and C. This was something I was very curious about and very happy to see them provide
Posted by: MattK | January 12, 2007 at 01:20 PM
I'm just wondering if anyone knows whether or not the comcast setup will have TivoToGo functionality?
Posted by: Greg | January 13, 2007 at 12:30 PM
tivo doesn't offer tivotogo functionality with HiDef recordings, so no, they won't offer it with comcast (until they get to the point where they do offer hidef togo.)
Posted by: jeff | January 15, 2007 at 12:12 PM
Here the link to Google Video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208159206109785775&q=tivo&hl=en
Interesting that the software has two functions the Series 3 does not:
"Search for HD programs"
and
"Record in HD if available"
The second one is huge. Especially for Wishlist which can appear on multiple channels. It also comes with the peanut. I think 50% of the problems I have had with the Comcast Box have remote related.
Posted by: Wendell | January 15, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Couldn't they still include the TivoToGo feature for non-HiDef recordings?
Posted by: Greg | January 16, 2007 at 02:38 PM
"Couldn't they still include the TivoToGo feature for non-HiDef recordings?"
No. Since the Seires 3 and this Comcast box are certified by Cablelabs they need Cablelabs sign off to activiate Tivotogo and so far Cablelabs says no. I think the issue is arround .tivo files DRM.
Posted by: Wendell | January 17, 2007 at 03:11 PM
"This suggests that we won't see a true TiVo remote with this box, and likely will get the same clutterific remote we have now."
Once you call Comcast and have them send the TiVo software to your box, they will mail you a TiVo remote with some added Comcast buttons. :)
Posted by: Joel | January 31, 2007 at 10:57 AM