Post by dkennedy on Jan 6, 2006 7:50:30 GMT -5
TiVo shows Series3 HDTV Cable Card unit at CES
January 5, 2006
Post by zonereyrie, tivolovers.com forum
Sorry for the delay, I got a later start today than I'd hoped, my bad. I went straight to TiVo's booth and I've been here for a while now, looking around and taking photos. I got a personal tour from TiVoPony of all the new stuff, most of which I can share. :-) Through the marvel of unsecured WiFi I'm coming to you from their booth. The biggest thing they have on display is the Series3 box. The Series3 is the CableCARD HDTV unit, which is due out in mid-to-late 2006. And let me tell you, it is a *SHARP* looking box! Very sleek design, very nice. I have photos, I'll get them up ASAP, but I didn't want to wait to post.
The unit has two CableCARD slots on the back and it will support Multi-Stream (CableCARD 2.0) or Single-Stream (CableCARD 1.0) cards. If you have multi-stream then you only need one card, but as long as only single stream cards are available you can use two of them. Yes, the unit is dual-tuner - actually, like the HD DirecTiVo it can use any two of the tuners it has, and it has six. 2 cable tuners, 2 ATSC tuners, and 2 NTSC tuners. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA.
The only inputs the unit has are a coax cable in and a coax antenna in. There are no RCA or S-Video inputs on this unit. For output it has HDMI, Component Video, S-Video, and Composite Video. It has optical digital audio out, as well as RCA stereo out. Like the Series2 units it has 2 USB ports, and it also has a 10/100baseT Ethernet jack built-in. The unit also still has the modem, which seems increasingly archaic. :-) Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - it also has an external SATA port. ;-)
The unit has front panel controls clustered on the right, and a nice display in the middle with a very cool feature - it displays the title of the show(s) tuned at the time, so you always know what it is recording at a glance. There is also an output indicator that indicates if the unit is outputting in 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i - and it can be set to any of those. It can also be set to pass-through, so it will send the shows to the TV in whatever format they were received.
The remote ls also sleeker - a slick update of the Series2 peanut with minor changes for HDTV (such as an aspect button). But the big change is that the remote is backlit! It is also weighted and has a ridged pattern on the back towards the base, so there is VERY distinct tactile feedback as to having the remote the right way around in your hand. So those who dislike the peanut because of the ambiguity should be happy.
The box unit still encodes analog content as MPEG2, like the current units, but it supports playback of advanced codecs such as MPEG4 AVC/H.264. This will open up the possibilities of broadband content using more efficient codecs, including HD downloads.
The photos are currently uploading to www.megazone.org/Photos/CES2006/TiVo/ - I'll fix the permissions as soon as they're all up so you can see them. Warning, they're HUGE since they're 5 mega pixels, I don't have time to make thumbnails at the moment. I'll do that later - I noticed some of them are a bit blurry, I'll take some more and upload those as well.
Oh, and remember that SATA port? TiVo will also be selling an external SATA drive for easy storage expansion, and they have that on display here too.
I have more, I'll post it in a moment. :-)
EDIT: To clarify, it supports analog cable, even any digital cable channels sent in the clear, without CableCARD. You only need CableCARD for any protected digital channels, to handle the descryption. And since all digital cable systems in the US *must* support CableCARD - it is an FCC mandate - then it should work with all cable systems, analog or digital.
I also got a bit more info, the chipset used in the Series2 supports VC-1 (aka WMV9) and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, along with MPEG-2, so it has all the same codecs as HD-DVD or Blu-ray. When I asked if it was using a Broadcomm chip I was told that would be a good guess.
There is also another URL for the photos: www.megazone.org.nyud.net:8090/Photos/CES2006/TiVo/ - and if anyone else wants to mirror them, please feel free - just give me some credit. If you want to repost them in your own blog, site, etc - please COPY them to your server, don't kill mine. :-)
As for price - nothing has been announced yet, that's still To Be Determined.
I have more photos which I'll be uploading shortly.
EDIT 2: Oh, one other tech detail I forgot. The S3 is still using IDE drives internally, only the external drive is SATA. Also, the external drive is not removable in the conventional sense. Once it is connected, the OS makes it part of the file system and shows may be recorded using both the internal and external drive - as in the SAME show may have its bits scattered on both. If you disconnect the external drive the unit will cope with it, but any shows recorded with any data on the external drive will vanish. So it isn't something you connect, record to, then take to another unit to watch the shows.
As for CPU, RAM, etc. I don't have that info yet, but I'll ask.
Anything else? :-)
EDIT 3: See this entry for more info on the photos - more uploads and mirrors. Also, to permalink to this post, use www.tivolovers.com/252572.html as the best direct link.
January 5, 2006
Post by zonereyrie, tivolovers.com forum
Sorry for the delay, I got a later start today than I'd hoped, my bad. I went straight to TiVo's booth and I've been here for a while now, looking around and taking photos. I got a personal tour from TiVoPony of all the new stuff, most of which I can share. :-) Through the marvel of unsecured WiFi I'm coming to you from their booth. The biggest thing they have on display is the Series3 box. The Series3 is the CableCARD HDTV unit, which is due out in mid-to-late 2006. And let me tell you, it is a *SHARP* looking box! Very sleek design, very nice. I have photos, I'll get them up ASAP, but I didn't want to wait to post.
The unit has two CableCARD slots on the back and it will support Multi-Stream (CableCARD 2.0) or Single-Stream (CableCARD 1.0) cards. If you have multi-stream then you only need one card, but as long as only single stream cards are available you can use two of them. Yes, the unit is dual-tuner - actually, like the HD DirecTiVo it can use any two of the tuners it has, and it has six. 2 cable tuners, 2 ATSC tuners, and 2 NTSC tuners. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA.
The only inputs the unit has are a coax cable in and a coax antenna in. There are no RCA or S-Video inputs on this unit. For output it has HDMI, Component Video, S-Video, and Composite Video. It has optical digital audio out, as well as RCA stereo out. Like the Series2 units it has 2 USB ports, and it also has a 10/100baseT Ethernet jack built-in. The unit also still has the modem, which seems increasingly archaic. :-) Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - it also has an external SATA port. ;-)
The unit has front panel controls clustered on the right, and a nice display in the middle with a very cool feature - it displays the title of the show(s) tuned at the time, so you always know what it is recording at a glance. There is also an output indicator that indicates if the unit is outputting in 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i - and it can be set to any of those. It can also be set to pass-through, so it will send the shows to the TV in whatever format they were received.
The remote ls also sleeker - a slick update of the Series2 peanut with minor changes for HDTV (such as an aspect button). But the big change is that the remote is backlit! It is also weighted and has a ridged pattern on the back towards the base, so there is VERY distinct tactile feedback as to having the remote the right way around in your hand. So those who dislike the peanut because of the ambiguity should be happy.
The box unit still encodes analog content as MPEG2, like the current units, but it supports playback of advanced codecs such as MPEG4 AVC/H.264. This will open up the possibilities of broadband content using more efficient codecs, including HD downloads.
The photos are currently uploading to www.megazone.org/Photos/CES2006/TiVo/ - I'll fix the permissions as soon as they're all up so you can see them. Warning, they're HUGE since they're 5 mega pixels, I don't have time to make thumbnails at the moment. I'll do that later - I noticed some of them are a bit blurry, I'll take some more and upload those as well.
Oh, and remember that SATA port? TiVo will also be selling an external SATA drive for easy storage expansion, and they have that on display here too.
I have more, I'll post it in a moment. :-)
EDIT: To clarify, it supports analog cable, even any digital cable channels sent in the clear, without CableCARD. You only need CableCARD for any protected digital channels, to handle the descryption. And since all digital cable systems in the US *must* support CableCARD - it is an FCC mandate - then it should work with all cable systems, analog or digital.
I also got a bit more info, the chipset used in the Series2 supports VC-1 (aka WMV9) and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, along with MPEG-2, so it has all the same codecs as HD-DVD or Blu-ray. When I asked if it was using a Broadcomm chip I was told that would be a good guess.
There is also another URL for the photos: www.megazone.org.nyud.net:8090/Photos/CES2006/TiVo/ - and if anyone else wants to mirror them, please feel free - just give me some credit. If you want to repost them in your own blog, site, etc - please COPY them to your server, don't kill mine. :-)
As for price - nothing has been announced yet, that's still To Be Determined.
I have more photos which I'll be uploading shortly.
EDIT 2: Oh, one other tech detail I forgot. The S3 is still using IDE drives internally, only the external drive is SATA. Also, the external drive is not removable in the conventional sense. Once it is connected, the OS makes it part of the file system and shows may be recorded using both the internal and external drive - as in the SAME show may have its bits scattered on both. If you disconnect the external drive the unit will cope with it, but any shows recorded with any data on the external drive will vanish. So it isn't something you connect, record to, then take to another unit to watch the shows.
As for CPU, RAM, etc. I don't have that info yet, but I'll ask.
Anything else? :-)
EDIT 3: See this entry for more info on the photos - more uploads and mirrors. Also, to permalink to this post, use www.tivolovers.com/252572.html as the best direct link.
