TiVo Blog » Sunday’s High Def Content Makes The Series 3 TiVo Look Pretty Damn Good

Sunday’s High Def Content Makes The Series 3 TiVo Look Pretty Damn Good

Tonight (Sunday) is one of the best nights to watch TV in high definition. Two of my most favorite shows (Desperate Housewives & 24) are both broadcast in HD. In order for me to watch both of these shows in HD I have to forgo the benefits of my Series 2 TiVo and watch both shows live. Unfortunately tonight, 24 is on from 8 -10PM and Desperate Housewives is on from 9 -10PM. As you can see, it’s kind of difficult to watch both shows at once.

A keen reader would suggest that I pick up my cable company’s DVR so that I could record both of these shows at the same time in HD. The problem with this solution is that my cable company (Time Warner) doesn’t offer Fox or ABC in HD. In fact, I’m currently only able to get CBS and ESPN in HD (how sad is that). In order for me to get the most HD possible, I’ve gone through the hassle of putting up an antenna so that I can get both Fox and ABC in HD for free. As far as I know, the DVR that Time Warner has to offer isn’t capable of recording over the air (OTA) HD (my assumption is correct, right?).

This dilemma has made me start to think that the $800 Series 3 TiVoisn’t such a bad deal. If I had a Series 3 TiVo, I could record both shows at once using my antenna. Without the Series 3 TiVo I am forced to watch one show live and record the other one using my somewhat antiquated Series 2 TiVo. I know that this isn’t that big of a deal for most people but, for a geek like me who is totally obsessed with HD it is a big deal.

Has anybody else encountered a situation similar to mine? How well does the Series 3 TiVo handle OTA HD content?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Cable Company DVR, DVR, HDTV, Over The Air High Definition, Series2, Series3, TiVo, TiVo Hardware, Time Warner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Sunday’s High Def Content Makes The Series 3 TiVo Look Pretty Damn Good”

MegaZone says:
January 14th, 2007 at 11:37 pm |
I’ve seen a lot of comments about the S3 and OTA since it was released - generally very positive. A number of people have said that the OTA tuner in the S3 is the best OTA tuner they’ve seen.
CW says:
January 15th, 2007 at 1:04 am |
I record stuff OTA first before using the cable equivelant HD channel. It does just fine on cable HD as well…so glad I dumped my TW box. (I put up a OTA anttenna too since Sinclair Broadcasting and TW have not agreed to allow NBC on cable yet)
Dolan Halbrook says:
January 29th, 2007 at 8:37 pm |
The only HD content I record is OTA — I don’t bother with HD cable as it would add a ton to my cable bill and 90% of the HD content I want to watch is available OTA. The quality is fantastic, assuming you can get good reception. I live very close to Sutro tower, so this is not an issue, but make sure you get good ATSC reception first. The only real S3 bummer is no mapping of clear QAM channels — TiVo really needs to add this.