# Microsoft unveils the "One Box" - Xbox DVR*



## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

i guess you can say that the Xbox One will truly be the "One Box"*

*for OTA users only.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/4/9094137/xbox-one-tv-dvr-feature

For about $600, you get a gaming machine, a bluray player, OTT apps galore (netflix, sling tv, espn, nfl, etc), a skype video phone, an exercise coach, a web browser, streaming to mobile apps and PC's, etc, etc, DVR with one tuner and $500 GB of storage (looks like you have to get a usb external storage in order to enable DVR, it wont work without one)

Not too bad for OTA only, but they should make support at least two tuners.

Edit: here is the official blog post: http://news.xbox.com/2015/08/gamescom-dvr-for-over-the-air-tv


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

Wow that isn't bad at ALL if you were going OTA


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

This is probably going to push me over the edge to cancel cable. I already have a lifetime'd Premiere that I can put in the bedroom. TiVo needs to get HBO and Sling QUICK to save me.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Maybe by the time the feature actually launches they wil have a 2-4 tuner tuner. The single tuner one they have now makes sense because you can only watch live T. Anyway, but for a DVR you need at least 2.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

A single tuner is ridiculous. It should have a minimum of 2 tuners, preferably more. Also, would it have killed them to stick in a CableCard slot?


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> Maybe by the time the feature actually launches they wil have a 2-4 tuner tuner. The single tuner one they have now makes sense because you can only watch live T. Anyway, but for a DVR you need at least 2.


lets say they keep it at one tuner, you can easily make the xbox a two tuner, i do it now.

i have the xbox usb tuner and i have a Homeworxs OTA box hooked up to it via the Xbox' HDMI pass through and controlled via iR turning it into a two tuner Xbox.

you'll only be able to record via the usb tuner, but you can switch to the Homeworx to watch live tv.

more convoluted yes, but it works great. If you're are knowledgeable, you can hook up a hard drive to the Homeworx and make that a simple DVR as well and use it with the xbox interface.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

That's kind of a lame work around when you can get a 4 tuner TiVo with lifetime for $400. Or a Tablo or channelmaster for <$300. If they don't release at least a 2 tuner tuner then this whole thing will be a flop.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

MikeMar said:


> Wow that isn't bad at ALL if you were going OTA


One tuner though? What is this 2001? I had two HTPCs back in 2001 recording HD ATSC broadcasts. Each had one tuner. While I had dual tuner SD TiVos on DirecTV. Once dual tuner HD TiVos came out in 2004 on DirecTv, I mostly stopped using the HTPCs for HD recordings. I couldn't imagine going back to a device with only one tuner now. Especially for HD. I'm too used to four to six tuners in a device now for recordings.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Aero 1 said:


> ............
> you'll only be able to record via the usb tuner, but you can switch to the Homeworx to watch live tv.
> 
> ...........


  Live TV?!?! What the heck is that?!?


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> That's kind of a lame work around when you can get a 4 tuner TiVo with lifetime for $400. Or a Tablo or channelmaster for <$300. If they don't release at least a 2 tuner tuner then this whole thing will be a flop.


You are looking at this with a 2005 mindset.

I can't play Halo or Grand Theft Auto on my TiVo. For that matter I can't watch Sling or HBO Go/HBO Now on my TiVo either. This isn't meant to sway folks away from TiVo who need to record a half dozen shows at once. This is to catch the under 30 crowd who are hardly watching TV at all to make it even easier to cut the cord. It isn't meant to be sitting on a shelf next to a TiVo for someone looking only for a DVR, it's meant to be a $50 add-on that saves you from having to buy a separate DVR.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

JosephB said:


> You are looking at this with a 2005 mindset.
> 
> I can't play Halo or Grand Theft Auto on my TiVo. For that matter I can't watch Sling or HBO Go/HBO Now on my TiVo either. This isn't meant to sway folks away from TiVo who need to record a half dozen shows at once. This is to catch the under 30 crowd who are hardly watching TV at all to make it even easier to cut the cord. It isn't meant to be sitting on a shelf next to a TiVo for someone looking only for a DVR, it's meant to be a $50 add-on that saves you from having to buy a separate DVR.


I guess in the so called "one box" mentality it makes sense. The only thing is that there is no such thing. You need multiple boxes.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> That's kind of a lame work around when you can get a 4 tuner TiVo with lifetime for $400. Or a Tablo or channelmaster for <$300. If they don't release at least a 2 tuner tuner then this whole thing will be a flop.





aaronwt said:


> One tuner though? What is this 2001? I had two HTPCs back in 2001 recording HD ATSC broadcasts. Each had one tuner. While I had dual tuner SD TiVos on DirecTV. Once dual tuner HD TiVos came out in 2004 on DirecTv, I mostly stopped using the HTPCs for HD recordings. I couldn't imagine going back to a device with only one tuner now. Especially for HD. I'm too used to four to six tuners in a device now for recordings.


you guys are too old now. you still hold on to the old way of consuming media. their target demo don't need 76 tuners to record everything under the sun on their 7 Nas systems in the closet.

they go after the 30 and below who play games and then switch to netflix to watch tv and who dont pay for cable. By the time you guys start a show that you'be been recording for a year, it will be out on Netflix. this OTA DVR is just icing on the cake and get some sales on the cord cutting trend.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> I guess in the so called "one box" mentality it makes sense. The only thing is that there is no such thing. You need multiple boxes.


You don't need multiple boxes when this functionality is released for the Xbox One. The USB tuner is about the size of a flash drive and just plugs into the back of the Xbox. More importantly, the functionality is completely and 100% integrated with the rest of the Xbox interface, not an HDMI overlay.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

JosephB said:


> You are looking at this with a 2005 mindset.
> 
> I can't play Halo or Grand Theft Auto on my TiVo. For that matter I can't watch Sling or HBO Go/HBO Now on my TiVo either. This isn't meant to sway folks away from TiVo who need to record a half dozen shows at once. This is to catch the under 30 crowd who are hardly watching TV at all to make it even easier to cut the cord. It isn't meant to be sitting on a shelf next to a TiVo for someone looking only for a DVR, it's meant to be a $50 add-on that saves you from having to buy a separate DVR.


Still once someone uses a DVR they're going to quickly realize that you need at least 2 tuners to make it useful. If you have to cancel recordings because you want to flip to the game to see the score it's going to piss people off.

Aero1's work around is viable, but it seems unnecessary. You can get a 3 tuner network based tuners from Silicone Dust for $50 and you don't even need to put the antenna near the TV. It can be anywhere in your house where you get a signal and can string an ethernet cable. MS should really look in to supporting those rather then charging $50 for some lame USB single tuner thing.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> Still once someone uses a DVR they're going to quickly realize that you need at least 2 tuners to make it useful. If you have to cancel recordings because you want to flip to the game to see the score it's going to piss people off.
> 
> Aero1's work around is viable, but it seems unnecessary. You can get a 3 tuner network based tuners from Silicone Dust for $50 and you don't even need to put the antenna near the TV. It can be anywhere in your house where you get a signal and can string an ethernet cable. MS should really look in to supporting those rather then charging $50 for some lame USB single tuner thing.


the support for the HDhomerun and HHRPrime is there via DLNA, but its not integrated into their OneGuide. Maybe in the future.

http://my.hdhomerun.com/instructions/software-instructions/xboxone.php

in reality, the X1 can support 3 tuners but just one for recording. yet, its not intuitive.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

JosephB said:


> You don't need multiple boxes when this functionality is released for the Xbox One. The USB tuner is about the size of a flash drive and just plugs into the back of the Xbox. More importantly, the functionality is completely and 100% integrated with the rest of the Xbox interface, not an HDMI overlay.


I mean you need multiple boxes to do everything if you want the best apps etc. No device does everything well. So you need multiple devices if you want the best solutions.

At a bare minimum I would need three devices to handle all the content I consume. And even then I would not be getting the best at what I need. For that I would need even more devices. Since quality, convenience can vary between devices and content.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Well if they support the Prime then they could get cable via CableCARD as well.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> I guess in the so called "one box" mentality it makes sense. The only thing is that there is no such thing. You need multiple boxes.


Not true at all. You can do everything in one box with a HTPC. There's an endless library of games available for a PC and you can add as many tuners as you want. Blu-Ray playback, which the X-Box lacks, is also available. Internet access and e-mails are no problem. You can access any kind of media or streaming services using a HTPC. If you're running Windows 7 or 8 you can also use cablecard tuners for recording and playing protected content, not just OTA. There's also no limit to the amount of storage you can add, either internally or via a NAS or dedicated server.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

mr.unnatural said:


> Not true at all. You can do everything in one box with a HTPC. There's an endless library of games available for a PC and you can add as many tuners as you want. *Blu-Ray playback, which the X-Box lacks*, is also available. Internet access and e-mails are no problem. You can access any kind of media or streaming services using a HTPC. If you're running Windows 7 or 8 you can also use cablecard tuners for recording and playing protected content, not just OTA. There's also no limit to the amount of storage you can add, either internally or via a NAS or dedicated server.


you're tiresome flogging of this dead horse of yours is not allowing you to keep up with technology that is two years old.

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/apps/dvd-blu-ray-setup


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> Still once someone uses a DVR they're going to quickly realize that you need at least 2 tuners to make it useful. If you have to cancel recordings because you want to flip to the game to see the score it's going to piss people off.
> 
> Aero1's work around is viable, but it seems unnecessary. You can get a 3 tuner network based tuners from Silicone Dust for $50 and you don't even need to put the antenna near the TV. It can be anywhere in your house where you get a signal and can string an ethernet cable. MS should really look in to supporting those rather then charging $50 for some lame USB single tuner thing.


Why do I need to flip channels to a game to see a score if I have my phone/tablet/smart watch right there? or if I can ask cortana what the score of the game is? Again, you're thinking about it in a dated mindset. You're not the target audience. The way you use TV isn't what they're building this for.



aaronwt said:


> I mean you need multiple boxes to do everything if you want the best apps etc. No device does everything well. So you need multiple devices if you want the best solutions.
> 
> At a bare minimum I would need three devices to handle all the content I consume. And even then I would not be getting the best at what I need. For that I would need even more devices. Since quality, convenience can vary between devices and content.


Again, this isn't meant to be so flexible and so feature rich that it meets the needs of the top 10% of the most complicated setups and users. Microsoft is taking the Apple route and making something that is "good enough" for 80% of the users out there. If they can focus on that experience, they can get a bigger share of that and leave more complicated and demanding users to niche providers.

And I don't get why you need "three devices" to get the "best experience" since all the various apps are created by the services themselves. There's not much difference between HBO Go on an Xbox vs. Roku for example or Sling on Xbox One vs. Fire TV. That's actually a huge trend against TiVo. Cable companies are just going to create apps that run on anything, say that satisfies the "third party set top" requirement in the law, and then everything we love TiVo for, such as it's interface, will be moot.



Dan203 said:


> Well if they support the Prime then they could get cable via CableCARD as well.


Of course it's not as simple as just grabbing an MPEG stream off the network, though, and would require a ton of work, whereas the OTA tuner doesn't require any DRM, certification, and they can re-use most of the development that they did for OTA tuners in Europe. Not to mention CableCards are essentially dead and it would be crazy to spend that much effort to build support for a dead technology in a platform that will be with us for at least ten years.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

JosephB said:


> Why do I need to flip channels to a game to see a score if I have my phone/tablet/smart watch right there? or if I can ask cortana what the score of the game is? Again, you're thinking about it in a dated mindset. You're not the target audience. The way you use TV isn't what they're building this for.


I've watched my 18 year old nephew do this. We'll be playing an online game, we'll be in the match making lobby, and he'll snap the TV app and watch the football/baseball/hockey game until the match starts. If the tuner was busy recording he couldn't do that. Sure he could use his phone, but this is suppose to be the "one box".



JosephB said:


> Of course it's not as simple as just grabbing an MPEG stream off the network, though, and would require a ton of work, whereas the OTA tuner doesn't require any DRM, certification, and they can re-use most of the development that they did for OTA tuners in Europe. Not to mention CableCards are essentially dead and it would be crazy to spend that much effort to build support for a dead technology in a platform that will be with us for at least ten years.


The HDHomeRun handles all the CableCARD stuff. It just hands off the encrypted stream to Media Center using a special driver. MCE then reencrypts the signal using it's own encryption. They have all this code already, and CableLabs approval, from MCE. In fact I've already verified that the COM interfaces used to do this still exist in Windows 10, even though MCE does not, since we use the same interfaces in VideoReDo to create WTV files.

If they really want to look to the future they could use DLNA instead. The HDHomeRun supports DLNA and the protocol allows for recording of the protected stream.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Boring. It's just OTA. So the HDMI kludge will continue if, for some crazy reason, someone wants TV on their XBOX. Which likely no one does anyway.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Boring. It's just OTA. So the HDMI kludge will continue if, for some crazy reason, someone wants TV on their XBOX. Which likely no one does anyway.


Cable cards are such a very tiny portion of the retail market, it wouldn't make much sense for MS to even offer it.

I thought I had read that total cable card numbers were only in the hundreds of thousands for retail devices.

Although total cable card use is in the tens of millions if you count all the leased cable company devices that were forced to use them.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> Cable cards are such a very tiny portion of the retail market, it wouldn't make much sense for MS to even offer it.
> 
> I thought I had read that total cable card numbers were only in the hundreds of thousands for retail devices.
> 
> Although total cable card use is in the tens of millions if you count all the leased cable company devices that were forced to use them.


I am betting Microsoft creates an add-on device for multiple tuners. Since it is based on an add-on dongle, they could offer different options, more tuners for more money.

Also, once a replacement for cable card is ready there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't include that in the same add-on device. It is basically a computer and would have all the controls in place to be certified.


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## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

Needs hdhomerun support.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

JosephB said:


> You are looking at this with a 2005 mindset.
> 
> I can't play Halo or Grand Theft Auto on my TiVo. For that matter I can't watch Sling or HBO Go/HBO Now on my TiVo either. This isn't meant to sway folks away from TiVo who need to record a half dozen shows at once. This is to catch the under 30 crowd who are hardly watching TV at all to make it even easier to cut the cord. It isn't meant to be sitting on a shelf next to a TiVo for someone looking only for a DVR, it's meant to be a $50 add-on that saves you from having to buy a separate DVR.


Well I'm not the under-30 crowd, but otherwise your description applies pretty well to me. We've been a streaming only family for most of the last 8 years, and that's worked pretty fine for us. I decided to get an OTA antenna about a year ago, but really haven't used it at all, since who wants to watch live TV? Especially when I can just wait a day and catch it via streaming, most of the time without ads.

But something like this has my interest. It comes with something I was likely to buy anyway, and I like the idea of not having multiple things attached to my TV. I'd prefer to record to a internal drive to keep things cleaner, but that's fairly minor.

I think just pausing/rewinding live TV would be half my use case, which I understand is currently available now, and the ability to also record an occasional show is kind of icing on the cake. So as such, the fact that it only has one tuner doesn't really bother me. I had both Series 1 and Series 2 Tivos that only had one tuner, and I can't recall ever having a real issue with missing something due to a conflict. And that was 10-15 years ago when there weren't really other options. Now I just have trouble imaging two shows that I really want to watch, both on at the same time, and neither one of them being available to stream.


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## gastrof (Oct 31, 2003)

Since when is BBC News and CNN "free to air"?


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

gastrof said:


> Since when is BBC News and CNN "free to air"?


That is probably Germany's Free to air service with paid channels.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dylanemcgregor said:


> Well I'm not the under-30 crowd, but otherwise your description applies pretty well to me. We've been a streaming only family for most of the last 8 years, and that's worked pretty fine for us. I decided to get an OTA antenna about a year ago, but really haven't used it at all, since who wants to watch live TV? Especially when I can just wait a day and catch it via streaming, most of the time without ads.
> 
> But something like this has my interest. It comes with something I was likely to buy anyway, and I like the idea of not having multiple things attached to my TV. I'd prefer to record to a internal drive to keep things cleaner, but that's fairly minor.
> 
> I think just pausing/rewinding live TV would be half my use case, which I understand is currently available now, and the ability to also record an occasional show is kind of icing on the cake. So as such, the fact that it only has one tuner doesn't really bother me. I had both Series 1 and Series 2 Tivos that only had one tuner, and I can't recall ever having a real issue with missing something due to a conflict. And that was 10-15 years ago when there weren't really other options. Now I just have trouble imaging two shows that I really want to watch, both on at the same time, and neither one of them being available to stream.


Having shows available to stream is not really an issue. But being able to stream it, without paying extra for it and also getting it in higher quality is the issue. As well as without commercials. For instance many OTA shows can be seen from hulu. But then you have commercials along with only stereo audio and lower quality video. I can stream those same shows from other services but it would cost $2.99 per episode to get good HD quality and 5.1 audio.

And that is teh main reason I want to record the shows. The cable/OTA quality is better.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

If it does include 2 tuners, I think it is pretty nice product and a better value than the rest of TiVo's competition for the OTA DVR market which as far as I know isn't a very big market. As far as I am concerned the competition to TiVo only exists because there is a market that just doesn't want to use TiVo, because it includes a subscription service fee or some other reason that makes no sense to me. 

Comparing TiVo with lifetime to Tablo or Channel Master or the other couple of options, the premium for TiVo is easily justified in my opinion. The XBox One with dual tuner would be real competition, it will do a lot of things the others can't do. If it really will be a single tuner DVR, it won't be any competition either.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> Having shows available to stream is not really an issue. But being able to stream it, without paying extra for it and also getting it in higher quality is the issue. As well as without commercials. For instance many OTA shows can be seen from hulu. But then you have commercials along with only stereo audio and lower quality video. I can stream those same shows from other services but it would cost $2.99 per episode to get good HD quality and 5.1 audio.
> 
> And that is teh main reason I want to record the shows. The cable/OTA quality is better.


I've been enjoying a free trial of Hulu lately on my Roamio and I have to say, with the HD picture quality set to maximum (3.2 Mbps), I don't really see any difference from my local OTA signals. (PQ on OTA channels will vary somewhat from market to market, depending on how bit-starved the main HD channel is due to sharing bandwidth with SD sub channels.) The picture quality on Hulu is definitely slightly better than what I saw on DirecTV (which I recently dumped) or any of the other pay TV providers I had in the past. Granted, there's no 5.1 audio on Hulu and there are forced commercials but the most I've ever seen in the course of either a 30 or 60 minute show has been maybe 2 minutes total of commercials. TiVo's Hulu app is pretty buggy though; I've had a few crashes and weird behavior. All in all, I've been pleasantly surprised with Hulu.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Having shows available to stream is not really an issue. But being able to stream it, without paying extra for it and also getting it in higher quality is the issue. As well as without commercials. For instance many OTA shows can be seen from hulu. But then you have commercials along with only stereo audio and lower quality video. I can stream those same shows from other services but it would cost $2.99 per episode to get good HD quality and 5.1 audio.
> 
> And that is teh main reason I want to record the shows. The cable/OTA quality is better.


That makes sense. I'm not very picky when it comes to video quality. And I only have the stereo speakers that are built into our TV anyway, so things like 5.1 don't do anything for me either. I use Plex channels for the few current shows we watch, and those don't seem to have commercials, so that's not really a concern. I do watch some shows using the FoxNow app on Roku, and those do have commercials, but that's not too bad considering we don't watch all that much from Fox.

I do think quality just isn't that much of a concern to a lot of "the under-30 set" though. Most of my friends in that age group don't even own a TV, they just watch shows on a laptop with tiny speakers and don't seem to mind. Kind of like they don't mind listening to poorly encoded mp3s either. Now the Xbox One solution obviously won't appeal to that set of people, and there's a decent chance that people who like video games enough to buy an Xbox have higher quality standards than the people I know do...but then again being a DVR isn't going to be a core function of the Xbox, it's just a nice addon for those of us who might want to record something every now and again.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Cable cards are such a very tiny portion of the retail market, it wouldn't make much sense for MS to even offer it.
> 
> I thought I had read that total cable card numbers were only in the hundreds of thousands for retail devices.
> 
> Although total cable card use is in the tens of millions if you count all the leased cable company devices that were forced to use them.


True. But Microsoft might be able to popularize people owning their own cable boxes. Probably not though. They probably just shouldn't have bothered, as OTA-only just isn't very interesting.

I believe there are under 1M CableCards deployed in the US for customer-owned equipment. Correct, tens, if not 100M+.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Bigg said:


> True. But Microsoft might be able to popularize people owning their own cable boxes. Probably not though. They probably just shouldn't have bothered, as OTA-only just isn't very interesting.
> 
> I believe there are under 1M CableCards deployed in the US for customer-owned equipment. Correct, tens, if not 100M+.


The bulk of the effort Microsoft put in for this was for Europe, where there is a much more robust market of free to air terrestrial TV available, and many many more people watch/record TV that way. This has all been available in Europe and Australia for a while now, including the DVR functionality. Bringing it to the US was dead simple because they're using a tuner from Hauppage that was already in the market (meaning zero hardware R&D money spent) and the software changes required were likely marginal as well, since the Hauppage device was already Windows compatible.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

JosephB said:


> The bulk of the effort Microsoft put in for this was for Europe, where there is a much more robust market of free to air terrestrial TV available, and many many more people watch/record TV that way. This has all been available in Europe and Australia for a while now, including the DVR functionality. Bringing it to the US was dead simple because they're using a tuner from Hauppage that was already in the market (meaning zero hardware R&D money spent) and the software changes required were likely marginal as well, since the Hauppage device was already Windows compatible.


Ah, that makes a lot more sense now. I'm glad Microsoft is thinking more globally than I am!


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> I guess in the so called "one box" mentality it makes sense. The only thing is that there is no such thing. You need multiple boxes.


 That's true, the more you put in one box, the more problems when that box fails or fails to cooperate, and it will. The one box idea has never been rooted in reality.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Aero 1 said:


> you guys are too old now. you still hold on to the old way of consuming media. their target demo don't need 76 tuners to record everything under the sun on their 7 Nas systems in the closet.
> 
> they go after the 30 and below who play games and then switch to netflix to watch tv and who dont pay for cable. By the time you guys start a show that you'be been recording for a year, it will be out on Netflix. this OTA DVR is just icing on the cake and get some sales on the cord cutting trend.


 Of course this useless for the Playstation camp.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

dylanemcgregor said:


> Well I'm not the under-30 crowd, but otherwise your description applies pretty well to me. We've been a streaming only family for most of the last 8 years, and that's worked pretty fine for us. I decided to get an OTA antenna about a year ago, but really haven't used it at all, since who wants to watch live TV? Especially when I can just wait a day and catch it via streaming, most of the time without ads.


Where are you legally watching broadcast shows *WITHOUT ADS* a day after they air?


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