HD Equipment Upgrade Question?

[Nolzman]

Hey Robert (VE) or Scott,

Do you know (or can you speculate) how D* will handle the new equipment for HD Tivo customers. I am in Atlanta also, and one reason I switched to D* because the of new HD Locals. Do you think it will be a software/firmware fix, or will it be a hard module addition/replacement to our current boxes, or will be a add-on box in front of the current HD Tivo, or will it be a full replacement of equipement.

Since, there is no known replacment equipement for the HD Tivo, I do not see how they will handle their "premier" customers with HD Tivos. I want the HD Locals, but I do not want to loose my ability to record HD, including the new channels.

By the way, I am confident that D* will take care of it's customers.

Thanks.

 

[jdspencer]

This probably should have been asked in the DirecTV HD forum.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/forumdisplay.php?f=119

 

[Nolzman]

It was, but was promptly moved here.

 

[Hogarth]

I'm not Robert or Scott, but it will need to be all new hardware.

MPEG encoder / decoder chips are hardwired to the PCB.
They can't be removed / overridden and the CPU of TiVos is insufficiently powerful enough to do MPEG4 decoding in software.

(It's a 150Mhz MIPS RISC CPU. Compare that with the 2Ghz Pentium on most of your desks.)

My guess is they'll send you an MPEG4 receiver and 5LNB dish (not DVR) when available, and probably replace your HDTiVo when (and if) a DVR is available, which shouldn't be before mid or late 2006.

Do yourself a favor and don't count on D* and get yourself a good OTA Antenna.

H