Would you wait longer for the voom DVR if it meant that TIVO could be integrated with it, and the whole house solution?
I just realized after getting a Tivo box, that I would. I'm totally hooked on the Tivo interface!!!!
I just purchased a Toshiba SD-H400 digital media center. $299 from Best Buy (if you can find them, they are end of life models, I think), with a $100 rebate from Tivo, making it $199.
It comes with an 80 hour (36 hour at high quality recordings) hard drive, a progressive scan dvd player, and tivo. It has component output, but doesn't record or playback hd. It's mainly for the DVD player. But it does playback the Tivo recordings through the component cables too.
Here's how I set it up after an hour or so of wrestling with it.
I hooked 1 of the rca outputs of the voom box to the h400's inputs (I'm going to try the s-video later). I hooked the component cables of the h400 to the tv (I only have one component input, and its on my tv). I hooked the optical output of the h400 to my stereo. I took a splitter, and split my antenna to the voom box and to the h400. I hooked the infra red control cables from the h400 to hang over the voom front panel.
The setup above is all about compromises. Since I only have one component input, and one optical input, when I want to watch hi def in dolby digital, I have to hook the voom components and optical up. When I want to watch what I have recorded on h400, I have to disconnect the voom box, and hook up the h400. the voom box and the h400 are always connected via rca, so the h400 can record from the voom, even when i have its output to the tv and stereo receiver disconnected.
I stepped through the h400 tivo setup (take about 20 minutes or so then 4 hours or so to index what you setup). I asked for voom and antenna. You won't be able to record from your voom digital locals. You have to have the h400 (tivo) pull in the analog locals. It has no 8vsb tuner in it like the voom box. But since it can't record HD for me, that works out.
After about 4 hours, it had the program guide all indexed, and ready to start recording my prefs. I quickly set up season passes to all the new fall season shows I was interested in. The box is sooooo cool when it comes to doing this. And the program guide shows so much more info. And it is correct where the voom program guide is wrong so many times. It has a much more detailed explanation of the shows. And where voom's program guide lists <The musicians play a round of their favorite songs> for rave, the Tivo guide says something like <Fleetwood Mac plays several of their hits from "The Dance", including...> and they go on to name several songs. It's great!
I woke up this am and checked now playing. None of my shows had come up to be recorded, but there were 4 shows recorded. 3 of them I couldn't care less about, and I pressed the thumbs down button on the remote for them. But based I guess, on the fact that I had setup a Season pass for the Simpsons, the device had gone out and caught a late night showing of Futurama from cartoon network's adult swim. I hit the thumbs up button, and watched a great episode!
My next thing to purchase is a new receiver with multiple component and optical sound inputs, so that I can hook both of these boxes up at once to my tv and switch easily between them.
All these great pieces are there, but separated by format and connector, incompatibilities.
Now, the solution that I'd be willing to wait for!!
A Voom Hard Drive chassis (let me add the additional hard drives later, it comes with one to start). It has a cable tuner or two (like the one in the LG DVD players with the QAM tuner for cable HD), several Voom dish tuners, an 8vsb tuner or two, and an ntsc tuner or two. I want to hook up cable, antenna for digital, antenna for analog, and voom dish. Maybe these tuners come in PCI cards that can be added to the chassis later as needed or wanted. These tuners scan an pick up anything with a modest signal strength. Let me decide to keep or throw away the channel after its' been added to the list and I can see what the picture looks like.
It comes with Tivo software, the TV Guide guide, records hd, sd, and anything in between. It should have a DVD player/recorder for archiving shows from the hard drive. It should have all the major connections. And it should perform the functions we saw in the uCentric demo.
What do you all think? Should they incorporate Tivo, and stuff the current no good program guide and incorporate the ucentric whole house stuff with Tivo?
I just realized after getting a Tivo box, that I would. I'm totally hooked on the Tivo interface!!!!
I just purchased a Toshiba SD-H400 digital media center. $299 from Best Buy (if you can find them, they are end of life models, I think), with a $100 rebate from Tivo, making it $199.
It comes with an 80 hour (36 hour at high quality recordings) hard drive, a progressive scan dvd player, and tivo. It has component output, but doesn't record or playback hd. It's mainly for the DVD player. But it does playback the Tivo recordings through the component cables too.
Here's how I set it up after an hour or so of wrestling with it.
I hooked 1 of the rca outputs of the voom box to the h400's inputs (I'm going to try the s-video later). I hooked the component cables of the h400 to the tv (I only have one component input, and its on my tv). I hooked the optical output of the h400 to my stereo. I took a splitter, and split my antenna to the voom box and to the h400. I hooked the infra red control cables from the h400 to hang over the voom front panel.
The setup above is all about compromises. Since I only have one component input, and one optical input, when I want to watch hi def in dolby digital, I have to hook the voom components and optical up. When I want to watch what I have recorded on h400, I have to disconnect the voom box, and hook up the h400. the voom box and the h400 are always connected via rca, so the h400 can record from the voom, even when i have its output to the tv and stereo receiver disconnected.
I stepped through the h400 tivo setup (take about 20 minutes or so then 4 hours or so to index what you setup). I asked for voom and antenna. You won't be able to record from your voom digital locals. You have to have the h400 (tivo) pull in the analog locals. It has no 8vsb tuner in it like the voom box. But since it can't record HD for me, that works out.
After about 4 hours, it had the program guide all indexed, and ready to start recording my prefs. I quickly set up season passes to all the new fall season shows I was interested in. The box is sooooo cool when it comes to doing this. And the program guide shows so much more info. And it is correct where the voom program guide is wrong so many times. It has a much more detailed explanation of the shows. And where voom's program guide lists <The musicians play a round of their favorite songs> for rave, the Tivo guide says something like <Fleetwood Mac plays several of their hits from "The Dance", including...> and they go on to name several songs. It's great!
I woke up this am and checked now playing. None of my shows had come up to be recorded, but there were 4 shows recorded. 3 of them I couldn't care less about, and I pressed the thumbs down button on the remote for them. But based I guess, on the fact that I had setup a Season pass for the Simpsons, the device had gone out and caught a late night showing of Futurama from cartoon network's adult swim. I hit the thumbs up button, and watched a great episode!
My next thing to purchase is a new receiver with multiple component and optical sound inputs, so that I can hook both of these boxes up at once to my tv and switch easily between them.
All these great pieces are there, but separated by format and connector, incompatibilities.
Now, the solution that I'd be willing to wait for!!
A Voom Hard Drive chassis (let me add the additional hard drives later, it comes with one to start). It has a cable tuner or two (like the one in the LG DVD players with the QAM tuner for cable HD), several Voom dish tuners, an 8vsb tuner or two, and an ntsc tuner or two. I want to hook up cable, antenna for digital, antenna for analog, and voom dish. Maybe these tuners come in PCI cards that can be added to the chassis later as needed or wanted. These tuners scan an pick up anything with a modest signal strength. Let me decide to keep or throw away the channel after its' been added to the list and I can see what the picture looks like.
It comes with Tivo software, the TV Guide guide, records hd, sd, and anything in between. It should have a DVD player/recorder for archiving shows from the hard drive. It should have all the major connections. And it should perform the functions we saw in the uCentric demo.
What do you all think? Should they incorporate Tivo, and stuff the current no good program guide and incorporate the ucentric whole house stuff with Tivo?
