If you’re a Spatialight shareholder, and you’ve been keeping your left eye on the LG 71SA1D LCOS HDTV launching this fall, you’re in luck. It seems like they have a promotion whereby Spatialight shareholders will get a discount when purchasing this huge 71″ LG TV.

Thomas Hawk - Spatialight offers HDTV dividend

Sound & Vision has a roundup of three plasma displays, two of which are HD. The 42″ Panasonic TH-42PX50U, 50″ Philips 50PF9830A, and 55″ Fujitsu P55XHA40US have resolutions of 1024×768, 1366×768, and 1366×768, respectively. They all include HDMI inputs and Sound & Vision gives a brief review of each.

Sound & Vision - Plasma in Steps

“SnapStream Media, Inc., a leader in digital home entertainment products, announced today that world-renowned TV tuner card manufacturers ADS Technologies, KWorld, and VBox Communications will bundle Beyond TV, SnapStream’s award-winning DVR software, with their aftermarket HDTV tuner card products.”

PRWeb -
Leading HDTV Tuner Card Manufacturers Bundle SnapStream Media’s High-Definition DVR Software

It looks like TiVo will be offering an HD TiVo next year with CableCARD support! That’s great news, even if it is/was a long time coming. I already use an HD PVR, and though it has its quirks it’s great.

Now if only TiVo would offer their product in the great white north…

Thousand Robots - A conversation with a Tivo product manager

And according to Dave Zatz (via Thomas Hawk), next year will also be the time for a dual tuner HDTV TiVo. Maybe it’s the same box spoken about above.

Zatz not Funny - TiVo 7.3 is 7.2.1 And Other News

Sharp is introducing four new HDD HD recorders (otherwise known as HD PVR’s). These things turn on real quick-like, in about a second. They contain HD and SD tuners, and can record from both at the same time. Most of the models include HDMI outputs and FireWire inputs and outputs.

But you know, with all this new-fangled technology, these things still can’t record from cable or satellite. So they won’t be good for the vast majority of HDTV owners out there. Solution looking for a problem? I think so.

Sharp - Sharp to Introduce Four New AQUOS HDTV Recorders

Pioneer is introducing to the Japanese market a couple HDD/DVRs with HDTV support. They can record HD directly to the HDD, and it allows burning of HDTV material to DVD, but I think they downrez it first, the press release is a little ambiguous. It says “It allows users to move high-definition digital video recorded in the HDD to a disc at a higher picture quality than before.” Hmmm.

The player has an HDMI output and scales 480i video to 720p or 1080i, if so desired. Previous Pioneer players have allowed 480i passthrough on the HDMI output, no mentioned is made here of this feature. (It’s a feature that could be useful if you have a better outboard scaler than the one in the player.)

Pioneer Intros High-end HDD/DVRs

The other day Rogers called me up to tell me that my SA8300HD PVR wasn’t working properly. I told them that it was working fine, but they asked that I tune to channel 100, a VOD (Video On Demand) channel. Sure enough, it didn’t work. A little lightbulb turned on in my mind, because the VOD Treehouse channel never worked either. So they tell me to bring in the PVR for one that works. Great! I did that, but still have the same problem. ** SIGH ** If Rogers used TiVo, I betcha that wouldn’t happen.

And that seems to be the thinking behind Charlie White’s overviews of the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD and 8300HD (I have that one) PVRs. It gets the job done, with two tuners at that, but they’re still not TiVo’s. But for me, TiVo is not an option - not available in my country. So I’ll just continue living with my SA8300HD until I finally get a choice.

Digital Media Net - HD Digital Video Recorders by Scientific-Atlanta

DIRECTV will no longer be selling TiVo-based PVR’s to their customers, but will be going it alone come this fall. So the question is: can DIRECTV do better than TiVo? Can it match TiVo? Can it even come close to TiVo?

Well, TVPredictions thinks it’ll give the old TiVo a run for the money with some cool new features. Like a 90 minute rewind buffer, 3 times the norm. Frame-by-frame advance, which is great to catch those little details. Bookmarks, to return to certain parts of shows again later. And the on-screen program guide will tell you if a show is broadcast in widescreen or not, which is great.

Now, from reading a manual it’s pretty hard to tell how easy a device is to use, and that’s one of TiVo’s main strengths. So hopefully DIRECTV’s future PVR customers get a nice machine.

The DIRECTV PVR subscription will be $5.99/month, not including the hardware.

TVPredictions - Exclusive First Look: The New DIRECTV DVR

OpenTV is a company that sells to other companies like Foxtel in Australia, British Sky Broadcasting in England, and the Dish Network in the States. They create middleware products for cable and satellite companies to use and provide to their customers. It’s the same kind of thing Scientific Atlanta does for my cable provider, Rogers.

Thomas Hawk and Davis Freeberg recently got a chance to interview Marc McCarthy, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Wesley Hoffman the General Manger of the North American Cable Division at OpenTV.

OpenTV’s 2.0 PVR supports HDTV, live stats, interactive weather reports (does this mean I can change the weather here?), karaoke, and interactive gaming. That’s the cool stuff. The scary stuff is that they can take your profile and use it to replace commercials with more highly targetted versions. For me that would mean lots of Coke, Star Wars, F1, gaming, and car commerials. All the more reason for my wife to ask me to please fast forward them!

OpenTV
Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection - OpenTV: TiVo, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Okay, okay, I know this is old news, but sometimes I just don’t get around to posting about things right away. But when Sony releases some HD PVR’s, I just can’t let that lie no matter how old the news is.

PVRBlog mentioned way back on July 25th that Sony has some new HD DVR’s, in 500GB and 250GB sizes for $999 and $799, respectively. They even have CableCARD slots, which is amazing. So once your cable company supports CableCARD, you can get rid of any other STB you may have and buy one of these things. PVRBlog also mentions that Sony has a nice guide to HD recorders

PVRBlog - Sony’s new HD Digital Video Recorders.

Samsung unveiled a unique set-top box a couple days ago a Christmas in August event in New York. The Home Media Center includes bi-directional cable reception, an SD and HD PVR, music playback, image playback, and VOIP (voice over IP) cable telephony functions.

The Home Media Center is based on Digeo’s Moxi menu interface software and X-Stream x86 processor. The first iteration of the Home Media Center will be distributed on a lease-basis through cable partners, but Samsung is hoping to have a retail version of the device as early as late 2006, after dual-tuner capability has been enabled for bidirectional CableCARD devices.

“Cable in general is a very important issue for us, in terms of trying to enable cable’s quadruple play,” said Stepen Goldstein, Samsung digital set-top box group’s business development manager. “We are one of the few companies that are building everything from an HD DVR Home Media Center to stringing up Wrath servers to enable 4G Networks. These are all things that cable operators are either looking at or currently deploying.”

The interesting part in there is the bidirectional CableCARD support. CableCARD’s main problem is that it is unidirectional. I use Rogers, for example. Why would Rogers want to support CableCARD if they can’t sell their customers and video-on-demand (VOD) or pay-per-view (PPV) programming? It’s just not in their best interest. So I don’t expect CableCARD support from Rogers anytime soon. But CableCARD-Host Interface License Agreements is bidirectional, so those kinds of things should be possible. “Samsung is working to develop fully integrated bidirectional digital CableCARD-enabled televisions that will receive interactive cable television, voice and data services, as well as outboard set-top devices with similar functionality”.

Link: TWICE - Samsung Readies 2-Way Cable Products

LG offered the first plasma displays to include a PVR. Hitachi thinks that’s a great idea.

Hitachi’s latest plasmas, in 55″, 42″, and 37″ sizes, can be optionally bought with an internal PVR with a 160GB hard drive. This PVR will be able to record shows in HD. The sets will have two HDMI ports and range in price from $4332 for the 37-inch set with no recorder to $7768 for the 55-inch set with recorder. Only available in Japan starting early August, they may yet come to North America.

Link: Yahoo! News - Tokyo Edge: Who Controls Your Digital Music?

I am a Rogers Cable customer.

As such, if I want a PVR that’ll record digital and HD stations, I have one option: Scientific Atlanta. Rogers sells Scientific Atlanta PVRs as their PVR solution. So I have one.

I like it. A lot. My wife Allison likes it. A lot.
My ex-neighbour just bought one. He likes it. A lot. And his wife. (You figure out which way I meant that.)

These things are just so cool. Of course, there’s room for improvement. But it’s so much better than a VCR that I’m not complaining (much).

It seems like Scientific Atlanta brought in $34.5 million in profit this last quarter, versus $70.2 million last year.

Oh pooh. I hope this doesn’t mean that they’ll stop updating my software.

Link: MarketWatch - Scientific-Atlanta profit halved

Sony has two new HD PVRs available, one of which is just a capacity-reduced version of the other. The DHG-HDD250 can store up to 30 hours of HD programming while the DHG-HDD500 can double that. These PVRs include an HDMI connector and TV Guide listings. The cool thing about these bad boys is that they support CableCARD, so if you’re cable company supports that standard, you can record HD from cable. This still isn’t possible in Canada unless you get the PVR directly from the cable company. My PVR comes from Rogers. It would be nice to have a choice. (Evidently they’re good at making lots of money, but not so good at giving choice.)

Link: PVR WIRE - Two new Sony PVRs available

Design Technica has a review of Dish Network’s 942 HD PVR.

The DISH Player DVR model 942 is a high definition satellite receiver capable of recording up to 25 hours of high definition or 180 hours of programming on a 250GB hard-drive. However, what really makes model 942 exceptional is the fact that it allows you multi-room capability via one satellite receiver. It also includes DISH’s Video-On-Demand Service that provides the capability to “pause” live TV, record any type of DISH Network programming, skip recorded commercials, and create “instant replays.” Besides being able to “pause” live TV, the Video-On-Demand service allows you to fast forward/fast reverse at four speeds ( 4x, 15x, 60x, and 300x), skip forward (30-second increments), and skip back (10-second increments), and the capability to view shows in slow motion or frame-by-frame.

Link: Design Technica - DISH Network Player-DVR 942

If you don’t own a PVR, you owe it to yourself to at least consider it. I have an HD PVR from my cable subscriber - a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. And I have to say, I like it a lot. Being able to record something on a PVR is great. Even Allison likes it.

If you have a Dish satellite system, and an HDTV, then the Dish 942 PVR may be just the thing for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Pursuent to my article that you could pre-order this thing, Star Choice now officially announces the availability of the DVR530 HD, a high definition PVR for Star Choice subscribers. It is a Motorola device with a 160GB hard drive, and can record both HD and SD programming using its two tuners. I have two tuners in my Rogers (Scientific Atlanta) PVR, and it is a MUST. Star Choice claims that it offers over 600 hours of HD content a week, so that’s lots of recording. Too bad the 160GB hard drive can only capture a small portion of that (just over 25 hours).

Link: marketnews.ca - Star Choice Unveils PVR