TiVo digital video recorders
TiVo units have been manufactured by various OEMs, including Philips, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba, and Humax.
All standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, and S-Video—for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver.
The TiVo unit can use a serial cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver.
The availability of network connectivity has spread to the software side, where new features like TiVoToGo and Home Media Engine applications are now supported.
Series2 TiVo systems are based on MIPS processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips and high-capacity IDE/ATA hard drives.
All standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, and S-Video—for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver.
The TiVo unit can use a serial cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver.
The dual tuner (DT) models and the TCD542 (a revision of the TCD540) will only record from cable and satellite sources.
However, DirecTV has disabled the networking capabilities on their systems, meaning DirecTiVo does not offer such features as multi-room viewing or TiVoToGo.
The HR10-250 DirecTiVo units can also record HDTV to a 250 GB hard drive, both from the DirecTV stream and over-the-air via a standard UHF- or VHF-capable antenna.
It include two features: The Series3 TiVo was officially unveiled at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show,[7] and was released to the public on September 12, 2006.
In Australia and New Zealand, the dual tuners support the recording of two digital (DVB-T) over-the-air signals at the same time, whilst playing back a third.
Switched Digital Video (SDV), a technology which allows cable providers to only send the channel streams being watched instead of the entire channel lineup in order to better manage bandwidth, requires a USB attachment to a separate tuning adapter available from the cable providers.
The built-in wired Ethernet or an optional USB 802.11 wireless adapter could download video on demand from various providers.
The slimmer unit relies on a single Multi-stream CableCARD ("M-Card") slot and uses a dual core processor delivering greater performance.
The new user interface is meant to seamlessly integrate features such as Rhapsody, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, Hulu, and YouTube video, and make development of such applications easier through use of Adobe Stagecraft (Flash Lite 3.1 + Actionscript 2.0).
It converts recorded MPEG-2 content from the Premiere or Roamio DVR to a reduced data rate format suitable for the mobile client on a wireless connection (H.264, usually at 720p.)
The TiVo App user then selects a program from their DVR for viewing or downloading on their device.
Stream can handle multiple mobile TiVo App client sessions at the same time.
MoCA networking is a popular choice for whole-home DVR systems because, unlike Ethernet, it uses ordinary RG-6 coaxial cabling which may already be installed in the customer's home.
It is also often used in place of wireless as it provides a reliable, fade-free connection robust enough to handle even high-rate MPEG-2 video from the DVR.
TiVo's Director of Retail and Channel Marketing, Bard Williams, stated the app: "... offers ... complete control over management and program selection, a multi-touch remote that features gestures-based navigation, and the ability to manage and navigate Season Pass recording, your queue and info about cast, crew, similar shows – without interrupting your TV experience ...
When you're not at home, the app still lets you interact with your Premiere for basic management and recording tasks.
