Comment Re:For someone not hip on the lingo (Score 1) 291
How pissed I'll about my HD TiVo becoming obsolete will depend on exactly how the transition is handled and how obsolete my current hardware becomes.
First of all, most of the HD content I currently watch comes off my rooftop terrestrial antenna. As long as TiVo keeps maintaining the guide service for my local OTA (Off-The-Air) HD channels for some time to come, I'll be doing pretty well.
For me the main value of my DirecTV HD TiVo is that it combines in one device and in one channel guide everything I want to watch, with DVR capability for all of it. Before HD TiVo existed, I watched most programming in standard def simply because the convenience of TiVo usually won out over being tied to broadcaster's schedules and stuck watching commercials as if I'd gone back to the pre-VCR days of the 70s. My outboard non-DVR HD tuner did little for me than collect dust most of the time.
Even if DirecTV suddenly discontinued every MPEG2 HD satellite channel and switched them all over to MPEG4 all at once, I still wouldn't be doing that badly as long as OTA HD still works for me. And would DirecTV really do that, or would they (at least for a transitional period), put only new HD channels exclusively on MPEG4 broadcasts?
I won't be too terribly bent out of shape if the only thing I'm missing out on with my old hardware is new services that I don't already have. It sounds like they'll have so much unused bandwidth in the beginning that they could even simulcast the current HD line-up in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 for a time if they wanted to.
At any rate, it's not like I'd never planned on upgrading my current hardware. Sure, it would be nice for a $1000 device to last longer before becoming obsolete, but even without the MPEG4 issue, I'm ready for a newer HD DVR with a faster processor (this ones really, really slow at times) and some of the home media/home networking options which are currently available only in SD models.
First of all, most of the HD content I currently watch comes off my rooftop terrestrial antenna. As long as TiVo keeps maintaining the guide service for my local OTA (Off-The-Air) HD channels for some time to come, I'll be doing pretty well.
For me the main value of my DirecTV HD TiVo is that it combines in one device and in one channel guide everything I want to watch, with DVR capability for all of it. Before HD TiVo existed, I watched most programming in standard def simply because the convenience of TiVo usually won out over being tied to broadcaster's schedules and stuck watching commercials as if I'd gone back to the pre-VCR days of the 70s. My outboard non-DVR HD tuner did little for me than collect dust most of the time.
Even if DirecTV suddenly discontinued every MPEG2 HD satellite channel and switched them all over to MPEG4 all at once, I still wouldn't be doing that badly as long as OTA HD still works for me. And would DirecTV really do that, or would they (at least for a transitional period), put only new HD channels exclusively on MPEG4 broadcasts?
I won't be too terribly bent out of shape if the only thing I'm missing out on with my old hardware is new services that I don't already have. It sounds like they'll have so much unused bandwidth in the beginning that they could even simulcast the current HD line-up in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 for a time if they wanted to.
At any rate, it's not like I'd never planned on upgrading my current hardware. Sure, it would be nice for a $1000 device to last longer before becoming obsolete, but even without the MPEG4 issue, I'm ready for a newer HD DVR with a faster processor (this ones really, really slow at times) and some of the home media/home networking options which are currently available only in SD models.
