Life beyond BeyondTV?

[Tessian]

I'm curious... what does everything think the near future of DVRs are going to be?

I have been an avid BTV fan/user for 3 years now... but from what I can tell the future of custom DVRs like BTV are numbered. I love my BTV setup, but it seems Snapstream is either unwilling or unable to keep up with the industry and is quickly being left in the dust; there has been very little changes in the past year to the service, HD is barely supported, and analog broadcasts are dying fast. The cable companies are partly to blame for slowly pushing out custom-built DVRs but Snapstream's also, to me, has fallen asleep at the wheel. The unfortunate realization this brings is that I will have to replace my BeyondTV setup with someone else who is able to keep up with the changing features and offerings for television out there.

So with custom-built DVRs on the way out, where does everyone see the DVR market shifting? I see Tivo and Moxi with decent offerings, or will the less-feature rich Comcast/Verizon/etc local DVRs gain more of the popularity? I also hear about Tru2way service in the pipeline which could be good and bad.

Is anyone else feeling similar about the changing climate, or will everyone be holding onto their BTV sets, no matter the cost?

[tmar89]

Looks like DVRs are moving towards what the HTPC is trying to do now for us now. They will incorporate downloadable materials, ie, Netflix or what Boxee does. Like Boxee, they will be socially connected to your FB or Twitter account so you can share your interests with your friends, tell people what you're watching or recommend shows. It will link with your home PC so you can share pictures and movies on the TV and even share them with your friends' DVR by clicking on it with your remote and saying "share with Frank" and it will appear on his DVR.

With these DVRs and the HD shows, you will be able to go to advertiser's webpages and purchase products with your DVR immediately while the commercial is on. All of this is then charged through your cable/satellite company bill. It will also be available with TV shows on network TV. So say you're watching 24 and they drive a Ford Expedition.. well, there will be an alert on the screen to visit Ford after the show and find info about the car, and it will be able to schedule a test drive with a local Ford dealership based on your location.

Oh yeah, and it will record TV and still miss the last minute of a season finale because EPGs and DVRs suck.

/speculating

[Nick Burns]

Wait... life beyond BTV? Blasphemy!

[Wolfie351]

I don't think the PC DVR is dead or even dying. Not everyone is able to maintain or can even afford multiple PCs around the house. Because of that, the market is very limited and probably saturated at this point. Snapstream knows this, hence their focus shift. When HD capable nettops get down to around $199, I think the market will get back to a growth stage. If Windows 7 is able to deliver a stable platform, the market may even grow more. In any case, it will never become a mass consumer product and will continue to have a niche customer base. One thing that will certainly kill the home-built DVR is encryption.

The popularity of Boxee is certainly something to pay attention to. I absolutely love it, not so much for streaming or social networking, but for music and DVD organization into a simple, easy to use GUI. After ripping VOB & ISOs, my entire TV & movie DVD collection is in the attic. Personally, I have absolutely no problem switching between BTV and Boxee, I don't care about integration anymore. I want Snapstream to focus on stability and hardware support.

[ZetaVu]

I think as the nettops get more prevalent, than more and more of us DIYers will be using them as link systems. Anyone that builds their own HTPC probably will never be satisfied with a DVR. I think the only DVR's that will be available in the future will be the leased boxes from cable and satellite, and they will do everything in their power to lock incoming content to make life difficult for us DIYers. In the long run, I think there will be appliances with the flexibility of an HTPC selling in the $200-300 price range, and those will be linux based (The m$ tax will be self restricting). They will come with cablecard or the Directv equivalent, and be accessible on a home network. Any software DVR will need to interact with them, and ideally will add OTA recording as needed. I see more of a central house server with link boxes (nettops or extenders) for each tv, and ultimately processors and flash memory will be loaded in tvs so we can network them directly.

[vidiot1985]

As long as we have ATSC OTA or clear QAM cable signals, there'll be a place for DVRs that work with them, including HTPCs like ours.

I don't really expect that source of programming to grow much though.

DVRs integrated with sources of programming (be it satellite, cable, phone company stuff, etc.) will have a prominant place in the near term, but as high speed data links to the home get faster and more reliable, the in-home-storage buffer will fade more and more into the background.

Maybe something like the Tivo download service stuff will keep spinning platters of rust (or the equivalent) around, but in the future (maybe 15+ years from now :-), you won't know or care (until someone with a backhoe cuts a critical link in your area) if something is downloaded, or even buffered, to your local storage or if it's coming over the wire/cable on demand.

[Tessian]

That's an interesting thought... never considered interactive ads. "Would you like to learn more?" and it'd pause the show while you check it out.

So none of you think the home DVR / HTPC is fading? Cable companies are taking away analog channels in general (FiOS did a long time ago, Comcast is slowly) which forces you to hook in a STB and now have 1 for each tuner? Clear QAM is, by many reports, slowly disappearing as well. And even if you pay the $100+ for a clear QAM tuner, you can't get all of the HD channels you paid for.

I love my HTPC, but I feel at this point I'm missing more than it gives me. I have one digital tuner with a STB and one analog tuner. The analog tuner is dying a slow death as Comcast strips away one channel at a time so I'm stuck with one tuner and that's just not going to work long term. I'm missing out on HD and have been for years, I just don't like the idea of spending $140 for a HD tuner, then $10/month for only some of the channels, and this after what sounds like still much difficulty in setup. I look at the TiVo and it's all just there ready to go. Disk space may be a bit limited but you can always copy it off onto the PC or upgrade the hard drive manually.

Do you guys get around this differently? Multiple STB? Ignore HD? Something else?

[Nick Burns]

Full OTA HD here. Haven't had cable in 25 years. Don't miss it a bit.

[NickHark]

Originally Posted by Tessian

Do you guys get around this differently? Multiple STB? Ignore HD? Something else?

Comcast, IMO, will continue to offer clear QAM HD for the locals; and it will continue to offer digital SD programing for expanded basic if that is what you subscribe to.

HD is HD so ATSC is great, I'm 50 miles south of the Sutro Tower from which all the bay area stations in HD.

Clear QAM HD (locals) work for me, and so does the QC SD lineup.

IMO, this is what we have for the five years or so.

I need to add an HDPVR for the golf channel and Fox News in HD.

I'm cool with BTV.

[Abasi]

There are 2 key things missing in HTPC DVRs:

1) the use of Adobe Flash technology, we are almost in 2010 and we cant be still riding DiVX. All of our smartphones will have Flash within 2 years and the ability to 'Orb' your DVR so you can watch from work or your phone from anywhere in the world will take this hobby we have to another level. Orb has a good concept and maybe Snapstream should acquire them and integrate their technology.

2) A real HD-PVR that can take the output HDMI signal from your cable box. I dont know 1 capture card that can do that.


The only reason why I still have Beyond TV is because I know no other way to get my shows onto my iPod Touch with this level of simplicity.

[digidad]

I am running BTV with 3 ATSC tuners. With analog TV out of the picture, BTV's OTA recording capabilities are just great! I have been considering MCE in Windows 7, but since Microsoft does not have a software based extender, that would mean additional hardware. Despite Microsoft's enhancements, BTV still seems to have an edge over MCE on the PVR side of things.

[sjr]

I am hopeful that the htpc/dvr will grow or at least stay the same size, as the cable card tuners start hitting the consumer market after the 1st of the year. I have not seen anything about BeyondTV working with the Ceton Corp (google Ceton Corp as it won't let me link it since not enough posts I guess) multi-channel cable tv cards, but I am hoping that since Hauppauge is working on at least a single stream card as well that BeyondTV will support these.

I would assume this would mean a move to a version 5 but if they do support it I would get it and continue to use it. Right now with clear qam tuners and the hd-pvr I can record everything I want but the cable card tuners would make it much easier and allow multiple non clear qam hd recordings.

I really prefer using the BeyondTV interface over Media Center but if MC in 7 is the only thing that supports the cable card tuners I will leave BeyondTV behind.