I can’t tell you the number of articles that I’ve read which talk about alternatives to TiVo. Whether it is MCE (Media Center Edition), a cable company DVR or one of the Open Source solutions, TiVo definitely has a lot of competition. When TiVo first came on the market back in the late 90s, there weren’t many alternatives. The concept of a DVR recording your favorite shows so that you could watch them at another time was revolutionary. Now days, nearly everybody knows that this is possible. Most cable companies and satellite TV providers advertise their DVR solutions rather well. Take Adelphia for example, almost every bill that I receive from them has a pamphlet included which talks about their DVR solution. With all of this competition out there, TiVo needs to make certain that they stay on top of the DVR market and that they continue to provide a superior product.
Whenever I talk about TiVo with my friends, the number reason why they haven’t purchased a TiVo is due to the fact that TiVo doesn’t currently offer a dual-tuner DVR (other then a DirecTiVo). I try to tell these people that a CableCARD enabled TiVo is suppose to come out shortly (Q1 2006) and that this will allow TiVo to support dual- tuners. Often times this answer isn’t good enough. I know several people who went with a cable company DVR simply because it offered a dual-tuner. When I try and argue that a TiVo is far superior because of the features that it offers and the user interface, most of the time I am told that the biggest feature they want is a dual-tuner.
To be perfectly honest, I understand where these people are coming from. Not currently having a dual-tuner is TiVo’s biggest drawback. For me personally it doesn’t matter because most of the shows that I record are on at a different time however, I’ve seen a couple of instances when I wanted to record two live events at the same time. Under these circumstances, I was forced to pick one show over the other 
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OK, so to get back to the point of this article, TiVo needs to get a dual-tuner DVR out the door before it is too late. I’m willing to wait for a dual-tuner DVR because I know that TiVo’s features are far superior to other DVRs. Unfortunately, not everybody is like me. TiVo Inc, if you read this blog, please pay attention to what I have to say. Believe it or not, I talk to a lot of people about TiVo and what it has to offer. Even though it may sound like I don’t know what I am talking about I really do 
. After all, how many people do you know that have blogged about TiVo for close to 1 1/2 years?
We know we’re not going to see a multi-tuner TiVo until 2006 at this point. If one were coming out this year, there would be some advance press, etc, by now because the retail chain needs to be prepped.
The CableCARD TiVo is very unlikely to be out in 1Q2006, I’ve been hearing ‘mid-2006′ since just about the time the plans were announced, and that’s what I keep hearing from TiVo. So I’d say late 2Q06, maybe early 3Q06, depending on how the CC2.0 testing goes. So sometime in the summer.
We may see a more conventional dual-tuner TiVo as well. But that would probably not do digital cable on both tuners – with the problems of wiring, cross-talk, etc, I tend to doubt they’d have it controlling two cable boxes. I mean, they could have two sets of IR blasters and all – but I can just see the average person messing that up so easily, and without an IR fort, reflected IR signals could mess with the wrong box, etc.
I wonder how many people are really willing to pay for a dual tuner TiVo. I doubt I’d buy one myself. CableCARD, definitely. But just a Series2 with another tuner? I don’t think it is worth paying more for that. Not that I think it isn’t useful for some users, I just don’t know if it is as useful as people might think. How many people with dual tuner cable DVRs make use of the second tuner that often? And then, how many of those 2nd shows re-air later anyway and could’ve been caught with a single tuner?
Two tuners means two encoders which makes it cost prohibitive. Plus, as stated by MegaZone, having 2 tuners brings up many problems related to IR control of cable boxes.
A 2-tuner standalone isn’t going to happen.
You’re going to have to wait for the CableCARD TiVo.
Thanks for the compliment Thomas Hawk!
http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/tivo-needs-to-ship-dual-tuner-dvr.html#links
Regarding the CableCARD units that presumably we will eventually be able to buy, I’ve done a small amount of research and it seems that the “Cable” in CableCARD really means you are in fact stuck with Cable TV, if you have Dish Network (as I do), DirecTV or another satellite service you are still SOL and stuck with a Stand Alone TiVo.
I agree that this is a HUGE problem (along with no HD support). I love TiVo as much as anyone, but I had to break down and get the DVR supplied through my cable company as it has both, dual-tuner and HD support.
I think that dual-tuner would be very handy, with stations making shows go over by 1 or 2 minutes (yeah, I know that the latest version of the software handles this a little better at least, but you are still missing part of 1 of the shows). Also, stations tend to put shows that are for similar audiences on at the same time for some reason. I don’t know why they try to compete…why not just put it on another day/time when people could then watch both easily. A prime example if Thurdays with Alias and Smallville on at the same time. I would imagine that similar people would like to watch both (I know that I do). Then you have nights when absolutely nothing is on…just doesn’t make sense to me. Put one of them opposite Gilmore Girls…should be mostly different tastes watching both of them. Then we wouldn’t even need dual-tuner TiVos. The other thing that stations could do is run repeats in the middle of the night or weekends when nothing else is on…then DVR’s could pick them up then.
-R
If networks wanted you to watch both their programming and another network’s programming they would make it easy. The fact is, networks want you to choose their programming and only their programming so their ratings go up and they can charge more for advertisement during their programming.
I personally would have purchased a dual tuner series 2 box if one was available a year ago. I only have one cable box yet I have 4 TiVos. My girlfriend monopolizes 3 of them and one of them is mine. They all keep very busy. We have a home network set up so we kind of have a video on demand thing going where we record a lot of stuff based on wish lists and TiVo suggestions and when we want to watch something on TV, we have a lot of stuff to choose from. I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t buying anything from TiVo until they released the CableCard box so I guess I wouldn’t buy a new dual tuner system at this point.
you *could* always download the lower priority program with Bit Torrent, encode it to mpeg2 format with NeroVision, and use the TiVo2GoBack feature to push it to your TiVo
i’m just sayin it’s possible…
Chris – I wouldn’t go as far as to say we will NOT see a dual-tuner standalone. I think there is a good chance that we will, but not until well into next year at best.
Robert – Correct, CableCARD is digital cable only. Satellite providers are not regulated in the same way and are still not required to open their systems up, so they can provide proprietary solutions only and keep 3rd parties, like TiVo, out if they want. If TiVo wins the lawsuit against Echostar then it’d give them more leverage to license TiVo, but that’s about it.
Why I did not buy TIVO:
1) No HDTV support – why pay hundreds of dollars for something that I will have to replace when I get HDTV?
2) Cost – why pay hundreds of dollars for a box and THEN have to pay a monthly fee on top of that?
3) The unknown – only 1 person I have worked with since TIVO began has had a TIVO. It sounded great to me but I have a limited budget for gadgets.
I got a DVR from Comcast. It has HDTV support, but more importantly I did not have to buy the box and so when I get HDTV, I can switch at no cost to me if a better HDTV box comes along.
The box is free but you do pay about the same as TIVO per month even though they try to say it is $4.95/month. This is still within my budget.
The features are not anywhere near what I understand TIVO can do but the ones that are there have made me a PVR lover forever. (at least until you can no longer fast forward thru commercials or copy programs to another device).
The 2 tuner feature is great also, but I need 3 tuners sometimes and have to switch from viewing the cable box to viewing the input from the TV to watch a 3rd show. Why stop at 2 tuners? Why not 3?????
A big thank you to TIVO. My TV viewing has been greatly enhanced and I actually watch more TV in less time and don’t hav e to set the VCR anymore.
With regards to Chris’s response above, with concerns about how a two-tuner TiVo would control one cable box, I have a fairly simple solution:
At least for now, my cable provider is sending me the analog channels (which I can get with a regular tv/vcr), plus some digital ones (that I can only get with the cable box).
Currently, my TiVo (admittedly a Series 1 one) is using my digital cable box AS the tuner (then connected to the TiVo via standard A/V RCA-style cables), and the Tivo’s (analog) tuner itself is unused. Because of this, the Coaxial input on my Tivo is also disconnected (and unused).
What I would like to see, is where I could split the coax coming into the house/room, and have one go to the cable box (and then to the Tivo via A/V cables), and then one to the TiVo directly.
I would want this hook-up to allow me to record either from the A/V cable (using the cable box as tuner), or from the coax (using the Tivo’s analog tuner).
Sure, the drawback (at least for me, having some digital channels through the box only) would be that I could only record the digital channels on one of the inputs.
Of course, maybe it could be set up to give “analog” watching/recording priority on the analog-only input to the Tivo, and the digital priority on the cable box tuner.
Needless to say, I’m not expecting to see this with my current (Series1) TiVo. Nor am I likely to see that on existing Series2 TiVos. But it’d be a selling point for me to upgrade to what I would presume to be a Series3 TiVo.
I am one of the people that Alex is talking about when it comes to dual tuners being a priority.
I sometimes record 2 shows at once but the real usefullness for me is the ability to record one show on digital cable and at the same time watch another on digital cable through my Time Warner DVR. This is especially important when you want to watch/record premium channels.
The feature that I miss the most is the ability to do WishLists and certain other Season Pass flexibilities. And the new Caller ID display on the TV through the DVR is quite handy.
Hate to say it but, I told you so…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051115/tv_nm/tivo_dc_1
[...] Today’s news suggests that several other people think the same as me. Right now TiVo’s biggest competition is the cable company DVR. In order to stay in step with what the cable companies are offering, TiVo needs to get a dual-tuner DVR out the door soon. As I said in a previous post, a dual-tuner DVR is a must for the majority of people who just want to be able to record their favorite shows without having to worry about which shows conflict with one another. Without this, TiVo is going to loose more and more customers to those horrible cable company DVRs. After all, how many people do you hear saying that they are going to buy a TiVo just because you can get 15 minute reviews from c|net? [...]