# Damn it Comcast! Your new DVR looks pretty good...



## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

Just watched this video of the new Comcast DVR.






It actually doesn't look half bad. TiVo should take some queues from this box.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

Storing videos in the cloud seems pretty cool. Not sure how Tivo will compete with that.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

Clearly this is faked. There are no spinning blue circles when the screens are changed. We all know DVRs require spinning blue circles to render high definition user interface pages!


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

I wonder what kind of apps they will allow? I am also curious how they plan to deal with bandwidth caps and 1GB speeds.


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## doctord (Dec 17, 2004)

This should make my Tivo obsolete!
Comcast's On Demand library is getting better. It does need a better interface on the TV like they have for the iPad.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

zalusky said:


> I wonder what kind of apps they will allow? I am also curious how they plan to deal with bandwidth caps and 1GB speeds.


I would guess they will somehow either not count the bandwidth used from these boxes or offer these customers truly unlimited bandwidth.


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

No wonder Comcast dropped TiVo.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

aadam101 said:


> Storing videos in the cloud seems pretty cool. Not sure how Tivo will compete with that.


That's what they are counting on: "seems" pretty cool. I suppose people who think the performance of the Premier HD interface is acceptable will also be able to live with the huge latency that will come with trying to make a "cloud" look like a DVR with local storage, but I suspect I'd just as soon drive a car that takes 10 seconds to respond to the controls as use a "DVR" with remote storage .

The best thing to do is buy Comcast stock now while everyone still thinks "cloud" is a cool guarantee of success, then sell before real customers actually get their hands on them in large numbers.


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## rodbeezy (Sep 22, 2007)

Cloud DVR is grand and all, but lest we forget, 250GB data cap.


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## aridon (Aug 31, 2006)

HI looks great. Tivo needs to step up quickly or die. That said I'm not a fan of cloud storage for my shows.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

doctord said:


> This should make my Tivo obsolete!
> Comcast's On Demand library is getting better. It does need a better interface on the TV like they have for the iPad.


But (at least some) On Demand stuff still has commercials. (I don't have access to On Demand since I have Tivos.. but my mom has watched it on her cable box.)


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

tivogurl said:


> No wonder Comcast dropped TiVo.


Actually, it's just the opposite. For the first time, we might see a real Tivo/Comcast partnership.


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

aadam101 said:


> Actually, it's just the opposite. For the first time, we might see a real Tivo/Comcast partnership.


Comcast's DVR looks pretty good. What do they need TiVo for?


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

rodbeezy said:


> Cloud DVR is grand and all, but lest we forget, 250GB data cap.


This is their product so no cap because they won't apply it against the cap.

While not a bad design, there are still many design queues designed the opposite of how I watch tv since it is made by a cable company.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

tivogurl said:


> Comcast's DVR looks pretty good. What do they need TiVo for?


You would have to ask Comcast.


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

tivogurl said:


> Comcast's DVR looks pretty good. What do they need TiVo for?


They need TiVo because of the TiVo patent portfolio. If they don't partner with TiVo, they get their asses sued.

One of the more interesting things about the video is they don't show a show being recorded, they don't show a list of recorded content you can pick from. The cloud is cool and all, but I did not get the impression that every show you tag to be recorded is stored in the cloud. There's still recorded local content.

It's almost like they wrote the whole interface and then some engineer said "Aw! F**k! This thing has to record shows too?!."

The one thing I am jealous of is the new FIOS guide that's coming out soon for their DVR.

You can see it here:


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## Joe01880 (Feb 8, 2009)

plazman30 said:


> They need TiVo because of the TiVo patent portfolio. If they don't partner with TiVo, they get their asses sued.


Sueing Dish ultimately hurt TiVo customers. Sueing Comcast will ultimately hurt if not bankrupt TiVo.


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## aridon (Aug 31, 2006)

Joe01880 said:


> Sueing Dish ultimately hurt TiVo customers. Sueing Comcast will ultimately hurt if not bankrupt TiVo.


Precedence. So no.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

aridon said:


> Precedence. So no.


Since they settled, has (legal) precedence actually been set? IANAL and have no clue...


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## Joe01880 (Feb 8, 2009)

orangeboy said:


> Since they settled, has (legal) precedence actually been set? IANAL and have no clue...


I dont think so


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

plazman30 said:


> Just watched this video of the new Comcast DVR.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You're right, it doesn't look half bad, it looks completely bad. I wouldn't allow such a ridiculous device anywhere near one of my TVs. The UI is vomitous in the extreme. OTOH, since I, like most people, don't have Comcast, it's a moot point.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> Since they settled, has (legal) precedence actually been set? IANAL and have no clue...


Yes, and for the worse for TiVo. The en banc ruled that the lower court must provide specificity in determining if the device infringes in regards to contempt--a required re-examination that probably would have taken more than a year--and that a NEW trail must ordered even if the device appears to infringe but in a different way. Not at all where the lower court was headed. On the one hand, in a few years, TiVo could have come out of the new hearing with everything affirmed and in a prime position to impose a licensing deal with Dish/Echostar on the order of $5 per sub (making Dish an example of how expensive it will be not to deal with TiVO NOW for licensing) or Dish would've had to SHUT down the few remaining offending DVR's out there, something Dish didn't really want even though they had stocked large numbers of replacement DVR's that don't infringe ready to ship. But the more likely outcome was a NEW trail and another 3 years, at least--but with a good chance of winning--but TiVo just doesn't have the resources to continue with that AND AT&T and Verizon and whoever else and the headache of Microsoft. This is a dark time for our little TiVo creature.

Yes, the lawsuits WILL bankrupt TiVo, but Tom's plan is to avoid going that far and long as he did with Dish/Echostar. By this time, after the "victory" against Dish/Echostar, Motorola, Scinetific Atlanta, AT&T, and Verizon were all supposed to be begging for licensing deals with TiVo, lest they end up like Dish/Echostar: rights to nearly all of TiVo's patents and TiVo rights to certain Dish patents all at ONE low price with final payment spaced out over years time in which TiVo may NOT exist, at the puny rate of about $1.50 per sub, according to another poster's math, not the $3 or more TiVo could have gotten had TiVo stuck it out and made a real, scary example of Dish, but Tom said he didn't want to wait for the Supreme Court to whom Dish was going to appeal and the time it takes for the Supreme Court to say, "not interested", plus the time to put it back on the calendar of the lower court in Texas, so he really needed the money, badly, cause Dish was in no hurry. In fact, this is almost identical to a suit settled by Echostar years ago when Gemstar/TV Guide sued EVERYBODY for patent infringement of its EPG. Dish prevailed in that suit, but gladly settled for about the same cheap price with rights to all current and future TV Guide "technology" when a higher court ruled a new trial. That was bad news for Gemstar/TV Guide, not Echostar.

Hey, this week even Apple settled to pay Nokia licensing fees for Nokia's claim of patent infringement for a sum about the same as what Dish/Echostar will pay. There seems to be no truth regarding patent infringement suits as it is just one company sues and whichever side can fool the jury will prevail.

I'm sure Tom feels the forthcoming Q4 tuner for MSO's is what will bring cable cos and IP and FiOS. lining up for TiVo service/licensing fees and come to terms rather than continue as defendants, but he is now suing deeper pockets than Dish/Echostar who will take the road blazed by Charlie because they have all the time in the world and can always strike a deal down the road, but would prefer to drown TiVo in more suffocating legal bills.

This is not occurring at all to Tom's plans.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

While the cloud for DVR was proposed YEARS ago, it is still a good idea in practice and makes great sense and would save an MSO having to exchange boxes for dead HDD's. The MSO's won't count the DVR service as part of the data caps because they'll have another, better way of sticking it to us with regards to DVR in the cloud. However. the cloud is also DARK. No doubt MSO's will price capacity. Meaning DVR cloud service with, say, 10 hours of HD at $15 per month or trade up to 25 hours at $25 per month or trade up to 50 hours at $40 per month or trade up to our Ultimate at 100 hours of HD capacity for you and your entire family for only $60 per month ON TOP of what one is already paying for Comcast TV and internet services. Can you hear the coins jingling in Brian Roberts' trousers. The pockets are so stuffed the change is spilling out. These are just numbers I'm throwing out, but you get the idea. The MSO's will love to price fee gouge with tier pricing.

For the consumer, the current model of a box with an internal HDD and ability to connect an external HDD for more capacity is DIRT CHEAP compared to tier pricing for DVR capacity in the cloud as a likely scenario. Please, do you really think they're NOT going to tier price for cloud capacity? Great for them, and while the technology of the cloud is elegant and removes those clunky boxes of DVR's with noisy HDD's or fans out of our home with its limitations of a whole home DVR (our phone system is such a "cloud" technology), but the pricing could be bad for us.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

innocentfreak said:


> This is their product so no cap because they won't apply it against the cap.
> 
> While not a bad design, there are still many design queues designed the opposite of how I watch tv since it is made by a cable company.


They already have watching VOD on your computer as a product, and those downloads apply against the cap even though it is also their product. But is is kind of a moot point, since they compress the heck out of the data, I doubt you could download 250GB in one month just from streaming their VOD content, and after trying to watch the rotten quality of the highly compressed video, you wouldn't want to anyway .


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

Doesn't this kinda make the providers arguments for data caps a big ol' lie? They imposed data caps to preserve bandwidth and ensure your network hogging doesn't affect other customers.

What is going to happen when an entire neighborhood is streaming HD content all at the same time? My guess would be nothing.


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## VideoRoy (May 17, 2011)

Long time TW / Comcast customer and just switched to Tivo a month or so ago. I will not look back for at least 5 years.

Of course I had the ancient SA8300HD but when they updated the SW the last time it was unuseable and a bunch of us jumped ship.

Now with Tivo my family can watch TV, record and catch a movie on Netflix without me having to trouble shoot and fix something.

The flexibility I get with Tivo and this community of smart, creative and willing to help users is something I would not easily jump from any time soon.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

This looks amazing. My google-fu is failing me, though - any good way to know when this will be rolled out to a given area?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

aadam101 said:


> Doesn't this kinda make the providers arguments for data caps a big ol' lie? They imposed data caps to preserve bandwidth and ensure your network hogging doesn't affect other customers.
> 
> What is going to happen when an entire neighborhood is streaming HD content all at the same time? My guess would be nothing.


My guess would be they will raise their rates because, "The unexpected additional bandwidth utilization is stressing our network, so we need to invest money to upgrade our network so that users will not be impacted by the increased traffic." Then, of course, they will also charge for the use of the cloud.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> My guess would be they will raise their rates because, "The unexpected additional bandwidth utilization is stressing our network, so we need to invest money to upgrade our network so that users will not be impacted by the increased traffic." Then, of course, they will also charge for the use of the cloud.


That one of the problems with these new products, they may sound great untill you get the pricing (they still may be great after that, but who knows)


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## qz3fwd (Jul 6, 2007)

Comcast, Motorola, SA, etc.. are announcing new hardware/services all the time, yet never roll them out system wide, so usually they end up being vaporware. Look at it this way. They keep showing off these things to give the FCC the impression they are innovating, blah-blah, but since they never offer them to customers in general, it is all a smoke screen to fend off becoming dump bit shifters.....


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## ThreeSoFar (May 24, 2002)

Is everyone forgetting something critical here?

You're relying on Comcast Internet for this. Sure, maybe it can keep up. Depends on a lot---wiring in your house, wiring at the pole, phase of the moon......

Oh, and don't be surprised if your Internet costs more to use the cloud.


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## miller890 (Feb 15, 2002)

I wish I could move just one HD show from one S3 to another S3 connected via cat-6 and a gigabit switch at the speed they demonstrated at the end of the video. They downloaded a full season of 30 rock literally in the time it takes to download two 60 second commercials in HD between tivos on the same LAN.


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## TVCricket (Mar 7, 2010)

smbaker said:


> Clearly this is faked. There are no spinning blue circles when the screens are changed. We all know DVRs require spinning blue circles to render high definition user interface pages!


The guide is happening in the cloud while the video is the only thing that the DVR is working with. Smoke and mirrors.


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