Review by N. Schweitzer:
After years of sticking to a single-tuner model (except for the DirecTv versions), Tivo has finally released a dual-tuner model. For the most part, the only difference between this model and previous Series 2 Tivos is the ability to record two channels at once.

The box keeps the look of the more recent series 2 Tivos, except for a black-accented faceplate. The connections in the rear are laid out largely the same as past versions, with the exception of an ethernet port that has been added for wired networking.

The software has minor changes, particularly slight modifications to the menu background images and the newer “tivo introduction skit” that appears when the tivo is powered on. The software and hardware work smoothly. There seems to be a faster processor included, as navigation through the menus is quick and smooth.

The dual-tuner functions work well. Having grown accustom to the single-tuner model, it took me some time to get used to the ability to change channels while recording (and that what is on screen is not necessarily what is being recorded). It was also pleasant to schedule 25 season passes without a single conflict-such is the benefit of being able to record two shows at once.

But the dual-tuner function needs some explanation. The people who benefit most from the DT function are those who have analog cable without a cable box (as I do). I simply plug in the coax cable into the tivo, and it is ready to go. (Note: there is only one coax input-the signal is split internally and sent to the dual tuners.) If you have a cable box or digital cable, things start to get a bit trickier. In fact, in order to use the dual-tuner feature, you MUST be able to receive at least some channels through an analog cable connection. This means that if you have purely digital cable that requires a digital cable box, you will NOT be able use the dual tuner functions, as there is only one connection allowed between the cable box and tivo. I suggest you go to tivo’s website and download the product manual for the DT tivo and read the part about connecting tivo to your cable. If it seems like too big of a hassle, you might want to wait for the series 3 tivos that will include cable-card technology (which allows you to use digital cable without the cable box).

One additional note, tivo has stopped supporting over-the-air antenna tuning with this model. If you hook up an antenna to tivo, it will only receive channels 2-13. Any broadcast channels above 13 will not be received.

And for those who are thinking of “upgrading” this tivo to a larger hard drive-the DT tivo is upgradeable in the same ways that past series 2 models were. I used the standard methods (which are published all over the internet) and replaced the 80GB hard drive with a 250GB one. Upgrading, however, voids your warranty (which is only 3 months anyway).

Overall, I am happy with the DT tivo, but that is in large part due to fact that I receive analog cable without a cable box. Many of you who have been using antennas, cable boxes or digital cable will likely be somewhat less satisfied with this model.

Review by C. Keeley:
When I received my new TiVo I rushed right in to install and play with my new “toy”. The instructions were clear and I followed them to the letter. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the second of the “dual-tuner” channels working. After many hours and much fiddling I gave up and called customer service. As it turned out my RF input was not working properly; however, I found out something extremely important. New laws require that all signals be digital beginning in 2009. Many providers are currently in the process of changing over now, and according to the customer service rep. the second channel of the “dual channel” system is analog only and therefore useless in the new digital environment. I was not made aware of this fact when I purchased the unit as it would have made a definite difference in my decision to purchase it.

Review by L. Martzinek:
I’ve been converting videos for my ipod since November, and just started converting for my PSP a month ago. I’ve converted hundreds of hours worth of video and used at least 3 different programs for each device. Nothing has given me anywhere near the video quality that this does.

I’ve bought TV shows on Itunes and watched them on my 27″ TV and been amazed at how good the image quality was, but I’ve never been able to do as well with videos I’ve converted myself – until now. At the highest quality setting the recordings look just as good as anything I’ve bought on Itunes, and with 60GB of memory on my ipod file size isn’t an issue. (I recorded before and after I installed a very recent firmware upgrade – if you buy this, go to Neuros’ site and get the upgrade, it makes a difference)

Converting for PSP is easier than with any program I’ve used. You record directly onto the memory stick, and then just pop it into the PSP and there it is on the video menu. You only have to deal with the PSP’s #&%$@# file naming requirements if you want to move the files off the stick to archive them.

The other big advantage this has over everything else I’ve used is that this is a one step process – you record it and you can watch it on your device immediately. Everything else I’ve used was 2 step: you recorded or ripped in real time, then you converted, in real time or longer. This is half the work.

There are only 2 real downsides: You have to hook up the video out to a tv because it has no display of it’s own, and it has no memory you can record onto – you need a memory stick or cf card. A potential third issue is the remote – you need it to do everything, even turn it on, so you really, really don’t want to lose it.

Overall, this thing is amazing. I wish I had bought it when I got my ipod. I could have saved over 0 that I spent on converting software, and a lot of time.

Review by Andrew Gray:
The Recorder 2 makes it trivially easy to get movies and TV shows onto my PSP. You pretty much just press the record button and it does the rest. Recommended!

Review by William Kasting:
First, I need to inform you that all of my home television programming comes from an antenna on my roof. No cable or satellite whatsoever.

When the Series 3 debuted earlier this year, I contacted TiVo about recording two HD channels at the same time from an antenna and was told that would not occur. That one would be in HD and the other in standard definition. That, along with the price made me pass on this unit.

When the TiVo HD came along, I contacted TiVo again and was told by one technician that it WOULD record two HD shows and by another that it would not. With the cheaper price, I decided to give it a try and am glad that I did so.

I am happy to report that this unit will definitely record two high definition programs at the same time from an antenna. No splitters, amplifiers or other hardware. Just plug it into the Antenna connector on back of the box.

Setup and activation was easy. The most difficult part was figuring out the maze of cables behind my TV and Stereo amplifier, but that is hardly TiVo’s fault. I already had it set up when I called to activate the box. When I got off the phone and turned it on, it was ready to download the Guide. Very hassle free.

The remote, while nothing fancy, has a good layout of buttons and is programmable so that it will turn my TV on and allow me to change its inputs while the volume and mute buttons control my amplifier. About the only other thing I need for it to do is actually turn the stereo on. But getting up once to turn on the stereo is a small price to pay for being able to record HD programs and pause live TV.

On some forums users have been reporting macro-blocking and pixelation when using some cable cards. I have no experience with that, but can report that I have not seen this problem using an antenna. In fact, I see no difference at all in the quality of the broadcast than I did when the signal went directly to my television.

After a bit over a week’s use I have no complaints at all with the product or service and would recommend it to others.

Review by Daniel C. Hatfield:
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1OPZD59RUSO2 TiVo TCD652160 HD Digital Video Recorder: Complete, hands on video review of the new TiVo HD box. Includes set up, scheduling and recording programs, watching Live TV, broadband extras such as Rhapsody, and Amazon unbox. Brought to you by The Digital Lounge (www.TheDigitalLounge.com). Please rate and comment on this video. Your feedback is appreciated!

Review by D. Allen:
Despite the fact that I am very nearly the perfect customer for a digital video recorder, I have held off the purchase of one, a decision mostly revolving around the monthly subscription fee versus the relatively few amount of things I avidly watch on television. With the brand new, subscription free, MOXI HD digital video recorder  sitting on my entertainment shelf, all that has changed … I get to watch what I want and when I want to with a much better picture quality than provided by Comcast hardware (see below) without tacking on more costs to the ever rising price of having cable in the first place.

First off, the MOXI HD digital video recorder is very attractive box and came with a complete set of cables, many of which you may not even touch if you are using the HDMI interface. Setting up the MOXI was, overall, a painless experience, if not a little time consuming. At first boot up, the device was contacting the mothership with instructions to find any updates to the MOXI software, which it found, downloaded, and installed. One minor nitpick here is that it did not provide the unit ID that is used to register at the website until after this 30 minute process was over. It would have been nice to be registering while I was waiting for the update.

Next came the M-Card install (multi-streaming cable card, allowing dual feeds for the device), and overall, went off with relative ease, despite a little trepidation on both my part as well as the Comcast@ customer service rep. He was not familiar with the MOXI brand and we both got a little nervous when the MOXI wouldn’t recognize the card for a channel scan (but did get the card’s ID info) until the customer rep was astute enough to suggest that I remove the card and try it again while the device was powered on.

Following that, there was what I can only assume was growing pain as the MOXI took several minutes to scan the channels and then start displaying me digital gibberish (a fascinating display of colored squares from improper decoding) for a few panic filled moments before finding it’s place in the digital stream and displaying a perfectly wonderful HD image of the selected channel.

In fact, the image was so good, I started comparing it back and forth between my Comcast HD receiver unit to only confirm my suspicions, that the MOXI decodes both 4:3 content and HD content with far better quality than the Comcast unit does (which is very poorly if you ask me). Unless I am mistaken, the Comcast digital video recorder is based on the same unit that the HD receiver is built on, so this is one place where initial price tag of the MOXI pays off.

From here, it has been a fun journey of playing with all of the features of the MOXI HD digital video recorder, some of which are great and others are fascinatingly not very good at all. The interface overall is very nice, and more so once you get used to it. It is obvious that MOXI has taken the user interface design as a serious consideration. Recording shows and series is a breeze, playback even more so, and I love the various channel categories (all HD, all Movies, etc.), which admittedly the Comcast digital video recorder has as well, but in a far less attractive menu system. I may have missed how to do it, but it would be great to be able to move through the channel guide display one page at a time rather than navigating one channel at a time (with hundreds of channels, I constantly use the page up and page down buttons on the Comcast remote). On that thought, I really like the MOXI remote as whole.

For the most part, recording has gone well in both standard and HD resolutions, with one exception of several playback errors encountered from a recording of Mission Impossible III (HD). At several points during the movie, it failed on the decoding of the recorded movie so badly, that it kicked me to TV once, rebooted the device once, and several times required that I attempt fast forwarding, pausing, restarting, etc. in order to get a video stream back.

Other than this yet to be repeated recording experience, most things have played back error free and with great quality. The few other errors during recording that I have encountered result in a visual line of noise at the top of the screen that looks like an old VHS tape alignment problem, but the shows themselves have been intact otherwise.

Recording series is brain dead simple and my only complaint here (and there might be a way to do this that I haven’t found) is that I find myself changing the default settings for recording a series every single time. In theory, this device is should be able to hold over a couple hundred hours of non-HD and well over a hundred of HD content, yet the series recording options are set to the almost the most spartan, space conserving settings that require you get to your recordings within a couple days. In my case, this is almost never the case and might even be a couple weeks before I have a couple hours to sit and watch some of it.

Another great feature to mention is scheduling recording from the Moxi website. I haven’t used it outside of testing, but I like the idea a great deal and bet it will be helpful the handful of times I know in advance I want to watch something, but will not be home in time to see it.

This very feature filled device would be beyond fantastic if they did one, brain numbingly obvious thing … give me access to a web browser for that love of GOD!!!! Here are a few reasons:

A> I want Pandora, not Finetunes (which I never did actually ever find a way to create a play list on … which either says I am missing something so obvious that my great intellect glanced over … heh)

B> I want Picasa slide shows, not Flickr (which also was slow and sometimes only semi-functional).

C> The big wide world of the Internet … aka … freedom of choice. DRM issues aside, it is no longer acceptable for networked devices running full PCs under the hood to try and corral me into their business partnerships.

Some might point at platform stability as good reason to avoid an open browser use on a dedicated device as the MOXI HD digital video recorder, but one of the other problems I have encountered a couple of times is the seemingly random rebooting of the device. So, that is to say, I doubt letting me run a browser in kiosk mode and flash apps such as Pandora within would do much to make the platform less stable.

One last note worthy mention is the PCLink to Windows Media Player, which involved some voodoo to get working (even after the security changes … still uncertain what the final incantation was to make it work … might have been the chicken blood and candles), I had access to all images and audio in my desktop machine’s library (which is not much, since I use Winamp). So far, this has been a much better experience to use than Finetune or Flickr on the MOXI and I think this was a decent feature to include. As, it seems is common in the digital video recorder world, it will not however let you playback video files over the PCLink, which is a somewhat baffling decision and one that I can only presume are related to copyright protection or the potentially problematic playback of a user’s video collection of various formats (mov, mpg, avi, mp4, divx, wmv for example) and codecs (an endless sea of possible codecs) being problematic on a black box device. Still, I would love to be able to play at least common formats, or if nothing else, divx would be a welcome standard.

I feel like I have given the MOXI HD digital video recorder a tough time of it in this review, and this is where the rubber meets the road folks. I have no other experience with DVR’s on the market, but the MOXI has gotten me pretty hooked on the use of one. Overall, the MOXI HD digital video recorder has been a joy to use and has been no more finicky than the Comcast HD receiver, but does provide far superior picture quality. That fact alone has me happy with the device, but the multi-stream HD digital video recorder, absence of subscription costs, and ease of use of the MOXI makes it a product worth considering.

At a street price of around 0 and iffy, service specific side features, it is a somewhat tougher argument for the tech savvy, as building a PC based digital video recorder system gets nothing but easier. For everyone else, the MOXI should satisfy and not having to add another monthly payment onto your ever tightening paycheck will make this unit popular for many, and in the long run will save you money despite the heavy upfront costs.

I think the MOXI folks need to do a little more finessing and re-tooling the “extra” features, but even with a steep initial investment and some quirks, I give this device a thumbs up for the digital video recorder hungry. Just remind yourself that the lack of a monthly fee will pay off in the long run and you will enjoy your sexy new entertainment center black box!

Review by J. Crawford:
Brief:

Pros,

- DLNA support watching my divx movies, hulu, mp3s, jpgs, from my tversity box was super easy. The DLNA menu is much faster than the Xbox360 or Dlink dsm-520.

- Menu is much easier to read than the motorola or tivohd, all three used different methods for moving around. all were just as intuitive.

- 2 hour live buffer is really nice… tivo is 30min…

- compatable with 4TB eSata drive from lacie. Tivo maxes out at 2TB total storage regardles of how it is installed.

- Ticker is kind of like a widget, nice. also there is a webpage display but it is currently really slow… could easily be a bug though. (you can view web pages from the moxi)

- worked right away after upgrading channel lineup. (the tivo required me to manually add the new premium channels)

- Just a response to other reviews as of july 10th when i recieved this box I have had no crashing, and my recorded content is flawless. Also the remote is indeed backlit.

Cons:

- Tivo has a much better search, smarter more intuitive.

- box to box streaming and box to pc streaming need to be fixed.

- moxi mate needs to be released.

- no discount for second/third box.

- streaming HD from netflix/unbox/blockbuster

All of the cons listed are being addressed by moxi and they expect all of them to be released this year… (with the exception of dlna 2.0 streaming to a pc client.)

I purchased the moxi and tivo HDXL the same day within 4 days I had both units at home waiting for cable cards. Fios tech came out only had one card and installed it in the tivo so I used the tivo for 4 days before another tech could come out and set up the moxi. he had not seen a moxi and after showing him the cablecard pairing screen he was able to get the box running in 20 minutes. both tivo and moxi were effertless in there set up on fios.

After using them side by side for 3 weeks I decided to send back the tivo for most of the reasons listed above but also my tivo crashed on me twice and stayed locked up not recording anything. I would really like to see the search and schedule features brought up to tivo level, and of course the box2box and live tv streaming would be nice. one note on box to box… some tivo content can not be transfered if there are 5c flags due to the transfer method of tivo not being encrypted. Moxi uses a dlna 2.0 copy method so that no transfers will be blocked.

I would highly recomend this product to anyone looking for a digital video recorder and want more open standards. Especially if you are already used to streaming from dlna product like tversity, playon or twonky. Also being able to have 4.5TB of recordings

UPDATE: Moxi summer software update added support for native mkv and avi files. This is great for streaming from a pc no more need to transcode.

Also moxi to moxi and moxi to mate streaming is working great. and lastly digeo has test esata drives up to 8 TB from lacie and verified they work with the moxi (those drives are currently close to 00 though…

Review by Easy-G:
I’ve been a TiVo owner since 2003 and this is their best TiVo to date. But it isn’t perfect. It’s a shame that the new HD user interface is still a work in progress. It is buggy and slow. You still have the option of using the old user interface, which is what I do. The processor in the TiVo Premiere is more powerful than the TiVo HD. But the extra processing power is mainly for the new user interface. It has the same recording abilities that the TiVo HD had with the exception of also supporting 1080p. It would have been nice if TiVo would have added a third tuner. Like the TiVo HD, the Premiere only supports cable TV and OTA antenna programming. The Premiere is almost an inch shorter than the HD and is more energy efficient. The main reason I bought the Premiere wasn’t to upgrade from my existing TiVo HD, but I wanted another TiVo for the kid’s playroom. If you already own a TiVo HD and you are looking to upgrade, you might want to save your money for the next TiVo series. If you don’t already have a TiVo or you don’t have an HD-capable TiVo for your HDTV, this is a great purchase. While the upgrades from the TiVo HD are lacking, it is still the best digital video recorder on the market.

We use our TiVo with a large antenna in the attic and a per month Netflix subscription. We have more than enough to watch between the DVD’s we get in the mail, streaming Netflix to our TiVo from the Internet, and the 30+ digital channels we receive OTA. Actually, TiVo makes using an antenna acceptable for us. It records all the shows we like no matter when they are on and we watch them in our time. I was able to buy the TiVo Premiere and a lifetime subscription with the money we saved over the past year by dropping cable. TiVo also supports Internet video rentals from Amazon and Blockbuster, but we prefer using Netflix because it’s cheaper.

This TiVo can record up to 45 hours of HD programming. That sounds like a lot, but you’ll be surprised by how quickly it fills up. You can add an external drive Western Digital My digital video recorder Expander 1 TB eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1S10000VN (Black) to add more recording space. The one big caveat with this method of adding recording space is you’ll lose all your recordings on the external drive and your TiVo if you decide to remove it later. The other option is to purchase the Premiere XL TiVo TCD748000 Premiere XL digital video recorder (Black). It will allow you to record up to 150 hours of HD programming and comes with a backlit remote. I upgraded the internal hard drive in my TiVo HD myself and kept the original drive as a backup. I’m waiting to hear from others before I attempt to upgrade the internal hard drive in my TiVo Premiere. To date, no one knows if it can be done or not.

FYI: TiVo has a couple of specials going for existing TiVo users. You can either get 0 off the lifetime subscription for a new Premiere (if you already have a lifetime subscription) or receive a 20% discount off the Premiere itself (if you don’t have a lifetime subscription). I believe you must purchase your TiVo directly from TiVo to get the discounts. TiVo offers free shipping, but you’ll have to pay taxes on the hardware.

According to a TiVo press release, TiVo is coming out with a wireless N network adapter in May with a retail price of .99. They are also coming out with an optional slide-out QWERTY TiVo remote later this year. The remote will utilize a Bluetooth USB dongle that will plug into the back of your TiVo HD or Premiere.

Update 4/18/2010:

I did give the new interface another shot for a couple of days. I like where they are going with it, but as I said before it isn’t a finished product. It locked up on me twice while flipping through the menus. As others have mentioned, if you drill down into the menu system you will eventually end up in the old menu system. They have a new option to list Oscar winning films. So I select a movie and it says it’s available from Blockbuster. Cool, but I haven’t been a member of Blockbuster for years so I go back and configure my TiVo not to search Blockbuster (nice feature). I then go back to the list of Oscar winning films and it still shows the same movie. I select the movie again and this time it tells me it’s not available for me to watch. So why would I want to see a partial list of Oscar winning movies that currently aren’t available for me to watch on my TiVo?

For people who have rated the TiVo Premiere one or two stars because of the new user interface, well I can’t argue with them. Perhaps TiVo should have sold the Premiere with the old user interface enabled with the option of using the new beta user interface. I’m sure TiVo will push out updates in the future to fix the issues, but we’re not talking about a few minor bugs here. I think TiVo released the new user interface way too early.

I’ve been using my TiVo Premiere for 3 weeks now with the old user interface. I’ve had no issues with it and it’s as stable as my TiVo HD. However, I see little difference between my TiVo HD and my TiVo Premiere while using the old user interface. I would still rate the TiVo Premiere as 4 stars with the old user interface. But as I mentioned in my original review, it isn’t much of an upgrade from the TiVo HD. One thing that the Premiere has over the HD is the ability to run the new user interface (which isn’t ready for prime time).

Review by W. C. Morrison:
As a Tivo HD user, I pre ordered the Tivo Premiere on spec, and am unfortunately paying the price. This has almost no new features, period. The UI has been revamped, but once you get 2 or so menus deep, you almost always end up back at the old UI, which is a jarring and ugly experience. Even browsing web videos, youtube and netflix are all in the old Tivo HD format, further hammering home the nothing new here feeling. I would say about 35% of the UI has been revamped, the rest is being “worked on”. That statement comes up alot in discussions of this unit. I was excited about Pandora on the Tivo Premiere, however that is being “worked on”, expected in the 2nd half of 2010. I am told the lag the new interface has is being “worked on”, while it is a multi core processor, Tivo Premiere does not have it enabled. While switching between the old menus and new menu’s my tivo rebooted without notice, cutting off both programs. Oh yeah, did I mention it still only has 2 tuners. This unit does have alot of promise, but this is a glorified beta test unit. Having been a Tivo series 1 then a Tivo HD customer, I expected similar enhancements in a new generation. I cannot find one feature, even the new menu’s were available to Tivo HD units in a beta form. not one reason at all for a current Tivo HD customer to upgrade. Like I said, this unit has promise, but only time will tell. For now, I am not impressed, nor do I feel it was even remotely worth the money.

Review by :
I own a Sony Sat-T60, which is the version of Sony’s Tivo unit that has the built-in DirecTV receiver. I agree completely with all the great things other people have said about Tivo, however, I have one big warning about the Sony Tivo box: the cooling fan is annoyingly noisy. It cycles on and off to keep the machine cool, and when it’s on, it’s noticeably louder than my computer. This could be a big problem for you if you’re one of those rare intellectual types who occasionally sits in a room with the TV off, perhaps to read a book purchased on Amazon.com. I called Sony to ask about the noisy fan, and they said, essentially, “Yup, it’s loud alright. Tough luck, dude.” Naturally, the sound would be muffled if you keep the box in an enclosed entertainment center, but if you don’t have such a cabinet, beware. I have also owned a Phillips Tivo w/ DirecTV and it was perfectly silent, and worked just as well as the Sony, if not better. It’s also cheaper. Get the Phillips.

Review by J. Garay:
There’s no other way to put it – I LOVE my Tivo! (Sony SVR-2000)
It has completely changed the way I watch TV and it means I can watch what I want to watch WHEN I want to watch it (and skip commercials)! While not recommended for everyone, I hacked my Tivo to be a total of 160 hours (two 80GB drives). I now have tens of shows available for watching whenever I feel like it. There’s always something on! My non-technophile wife even said that she was getting addicted to Tivo (a tremendous two-thumbs up from her!). All in all, this ranks up there on my list of all-time coolest products ever.Strengths:
- Features of the service – time shifting of programs, pause/rewind/fast-forwarding of recorded and live programs
- Hard drive access is instant – no waiting for tapes to rewind
- Ability to create a video-on-demand system
- Strong support of user community – search for “Tivo Community” on the web for more information
- Hackable!Weaknesses:
- Can be slow to load some screens
- Best if you can split your TV signal to watch something else while Tivo is recording
- Basic recording level is coarse – I recommend Medium (about 20hrs of time on the SVR-2000)

Review by Daniel And Barbara Sullinger:
June posting

ok I would have given this 5 stars but this comes with current problem with it, this has optical in for 5.1DD recording at this time hauppuage can not get this to work so you are stuck with PCM 2.0 or audio from the analog imputs, now to the rest, it records video at 1920×1080 at same or near Blu ray discs, you have a choice of bitrate constant from 1 to 13.5 Kb or on variable all the way up to 20.2, this records in the same codeec (AVCHD) as blu ray and HD DVD discs, it will take any component imput, I have mine through my receiver where my Dishnet PVR HD, PS3, HD DVD and Oppo DVD player runs through, just for test purposes I tried all my devices and what I test recorded from dishnet, blu ray, DVD and HD DVD the test disc looked no different than the original source, once you capture your source you can then edit or add chapters then you get to add a real cheapo menu and then put in what disc you need to burn either a DVD-R or a dual layer DVD Disc, it takes about 10 minutes to author your recording to Blu ray standard and burn on your normal DVD as a true Blu ray playable Disc, beware once you burn your DVD as a blu ray playback DVD you will not be able to read it in your computer again unless you have a Blu ray Rom or Blu Ray Burner, once and if Hauppuage ever gets the 5.1 DD fixed this could be the killer to blu ray Discs, hauppuage claims by next driver release they will include the 5.1 fix. Beware this is Xp service pack 2 or Vista operating system only, also you must have a fast computer to use this device and its programs, I have a dual core 3.4 gig Intel, 2gigs of ram, 2 – 500 sata HDD and had to buy a nvidia 7600 512 meg video card to get this up to speed and at the fastest bitrate 13,500 I cant do anything else on the computer, but this is the problem with Hi def, its power hungry, now I can finally put my hi def movies of all 6 star wars and 3 lord of the rings on DVD for 1080i blu ray playback, you can also convert the finished files over to movie factory 6 to burn on a normal DVD for HD DVD playback also.

August update…

Ok been doing alot of capturing, have made 40 dual layer DVDs for blu ray playback and 10 dual layers for HD DVD playback. the video qua;ity is great if you keep it above 7.8 bitrate, only major drawback is no 5.1DD audio, I am now Beta tesing the 5.1DD audio driver right now, wow this makes a huge difference with the sound. Problems still, wont work with the arch software yet, sync problems, but works with TSmuxer. There seems to be heat related issues with some boxes, mine stays on 7, 10, 15 hours at a time never gets overly warm and never locks up. I have done well over 100 captures with this device. Having an Lg blu ray burner and blanks getting below each, this might be the future for capturing and buring HD content at the PVR’s full 13.2 to 20.0 bitrate in the future. If hauppauge can just tweak this 5.1DD driver a bit more I think this will be a great little device.

October update,

I am now a beta tester for hauppauge and I finally got 5.1DD drivers and TME software that works, so now I got a card that finally works capturing movies the way I wanted it to, 5.1DD and can also edit with the software and no more sync issues, burn to dual layers DVD’s or blu ray discs.

December Update

Ok Hauppauge support finally has Drivers and software out for general public that makes this device work properly. you can capture 1080i from any component ouput using the 5.1DD and you get a great captured TS or M2TS file ready to burn to a blu ray or dual layer DVD with or without menu. since october I have captured and burned over 50 movies onto disc in 5.1DD and they look great, the ones from the 1080p sources look really great. Now I manually record all my movies, so I do not know how this works with a timer or sageTV.

Feb Posting

some here wanted me to post to let you know of known problems with this and dishnet, I find there is no exact problems per say with the PVR1212 and Dishnet, you should know that sometimes when you use this device with the dishnet you get out of sync problems and digital tears in the picture, most, if no all is the blame of dishnet or most likey the channel the show is broadcast from. Example: I have tried 7-8 times to capture and record Spaceballs from MGM HD channel every time its out of sync and every time its being played out of sync on MGM HD over dishnet before I even capture it. Please keep in mind when using this device, HD content is never perfect and they “big hollywood” does not want you to capture and record their programs. So dont be surprised if “they” are always trying anything to foil you capturing a Hi Def Digital program, be it dish, cable, PS3 or HD-DVD. so far I have captured and burned onto dual layer DVD’s 130 movies from all such sources all coming out perfect, be it analog, 2DD or 5.1DD audio. yeah where else can you watch on a disc, star wars, lord of the rings, batman, star trek movies in hi def, way to go hauppauge.

Review by K. Martin:
Here’s the summary:

- Not a digital video recorder. This is a pass-thru from audio/video source to PC.

- Generates H.264 at Baseline Profile 1.0 only — not the High Profile 4.1 that x264.exe-based programs generate. The Baseline H.264 quality is not as good as the High Profile quality using the same bit rate.

- Generates default .M2TS files which are difficult to edit — use the .TS file output instead for easier editing.

- Arcsoft software is good for capturing and that’s it. The software for creating a disk always seems to re-encode — a process that takes my PC days or makes my PC hang.

- After capture, I have to use third-party software to finish production.

The product is not an easy out-of-the box solution. Hookup is easy, and the Arcsoft software installation is easy, capturing is easy, but it gets tricky after that.

When you capture, you can set bitrates. I set my 720x480i broadcast to 4.1 MB/s thinking it would be fine. When I made a disk and played it on the Blu Ray player, the video had a horribly compressed look. That was a straight H.264 file from the HD-PVR 1212 unit to disk without transcoding. But when I transcode some other high-quality 480i video using an x264.exe-based application with 4.1 MB/s the video quality is fine.

Now I made the mistake of capturing my first video in .M2TS. Tried to edit it. Lots of software doesn’t like .M2TS. I didn’t know that then, but I know now. Fortunately I was able to use the freeware TSRemux to convert the .M2TS file to a .TS file. Now apps like H264TS_Cutter and multiAVCHD are happier. Lots of crashes and failures with .M2TS.

Editing. I use H264TS_Cutter to cut out commercials. This app is handy — you take clips you want to save and create a cut without transcoding. This is important in the H.264 video world because transcoding takes days on my PCs, but the H264TS_Cutter makes a cut in minutes. You can also join two files in this manner. H264TS_Cutter has never crashed on me with .TS files. I tried using a little more complicated app for cutting — TS Packet Editor — but I had to reboot my PC after each file edit.

Creating a video disk. I use multiAVCHD. It lets me make a simple menu for the multiple titles. To get this to generate a Blu-Ray format file structure, I had to (after clicking Start) select the button [AVCHD compatible players] — the button [For all Blu-ray players] wouldn’t work in my Blu-Ray player.

The size of the output files determines what size disk I can use. I use Imgburn to burn to DVD-5, DVD-9, or BD-25 — this plays in my Blu-Ray player as long as I choose the UDF physical format and UDF 2.50.

That’s the quick way of taking the output from the HD-PVR 1212 and placing it on Blu-Ray compatible disk. If all this that I’ve described sounds like Greek, be wary of this purchase. You’ll need to do your homework on using these 3rd-party apps (though fortunately the ones I’ve described are free) to keep the production time to a minimum and spare yourself days of needless suffering. Had these tools been included and described in the bundled software for this purchase, it would have saved me about two weeks of trial, research, and error.

Review by Mike:
If you’re too lazy to do more research aside from looking at this page, then you may be a bit surprised when you open the box. Here’s what you need to know:

1) This TiVo requires a CableCard. It does NOT work with your cable box. It in fact replaces your cable box, so things like On Demand won’t work anymore. Cable TV companies are required by the FCC to give you a CableCard on request, but they will likely charge fees for installation and for using the CableCard. It also (at least for me) can be a giant pain to get to a representative who can actually help you. I wasted hours trying to deal with my cable company. Also, try to get them to let you install it yourself, as it’s really, really easy and shouldn’t cost you twenty bucks to have someone else slide a card into a slot. Seriously, your blind, senile great-grandmother could do this.

2) The TiVo DOES have an Ethernet jack on the back along with the telephone jack. If you can use a wired network connection, then you don’t need to shell out extra for the wireless adapter. I’m now returning mine to Amazon for a refund.

3) Lifetime service (totally worth it in my opinion) now costs 9 up from 9, but you can get it for only 9 with a multi-service discount if you already have another TiVo. Even better, you can resell your TiVo in the future with the lifetime service and transfer the service to the new owner. You can’t do that with a monthly or yearly plan!

4) The remote is awful compared to the old remotes. Plus, they switched around the buttons! It also now uses 4 AAAs rather than 2 AAs. However, old remotes should work with this TiVo, too. (I haven’t bothered trying.)

Nonetheless, don’t let this scare you off. The TiVo HD XL is a really solid product, and TiVo is definitely still the king of DVRs. The XL is a bit pricey, but if you do the math, you’ll realize this is actually the best way to go. You really won’t save money or time by rolling your own or by buying the cheaper one and attaching an external hard drive.

Review by DaJoos:
By now the benefits of a digital video recorder are well known, and most people reading this review know about the award-winning Tivo experience – I’ll not spend time describing how it all works (but trust me, it’s great! – you’ll come to hate it when forced to watch ‘live’ TV without Tivo). If my guess about your knowledge is wrong I’d advise going to the Tivo website and reading all about it.

Instead I’ll mention why I paid the extra for the XL Tivo when there are other, cheaper options.

First off this is the fourth digital video recorder I’ve used (fifth if you count the Tivo Series 2 I bought my parents years ago). My first was a 160-hour ReplayTV (no longer available), and I loved it. As you’d guess when you have 160 hours to play with you have a lot of options. I was first afraid I’d become a TV addict, recording and watching far more TV than I ever did before – and in the first month or so that was basically true. Over time, however, you find your habits change – I eventually grew tired of recording every show ever broadcast, and instead used the capacity to only record my favorite shows, but with multiple episodes. That is, if you have a ton of room you don’t have to watch ‘ER’ every Thursday at 10 – you can read a book instead until you’re tired, then just hit the sack. Only when you’re in the mood will you fire the digital video recorder up, and you’ll find multiple episodes of your favorite shows to watch. I actually found I was watching less TV, or at least TV on fewer evenings, with the large capacity digital video recorder – I’d broken the habit of sitting down in front of the boob tube at 8 to be fed by the networks (and waiting through their commercials).

Well when the HDTV switch came around and I started using the digital video recorder from my cable company and it’s 15 hours of High Def capacity, I went from digital video recorder bliss to recording-management he$$. I could not record much at all, and so instead I seemed to spend all my time massaging my recordings (recording repeats at a later time to free up space now) or, what was worse, finding myself trapped between watching a show when I wasn’t in the mood or finding it gone the next day. Also, obviously, I couldn’t record near as much a variety as before.

Now comes the Tivo HD XL, which gets us back in the 150 hour territory. Yes you can get a cheaper Tivo and then purchase an add-on 500GB ‘digital video recorder Expander’(rumors of larger coming soon), or perhaps void your warranty, open the box, toss the old HD out and replace it with a third-party one – but after doing a number of hours/dollar calculations I found this XL was cheaper than a lot of solutions, didn’t void my warranty, and didn’t rely on hooking up yet another piece of equipment and cabling just to get me what comes out of the box with the Tivo HD XL.

My only cons, and these apply to all versions of the cable Tivo: 1) Requires a cable card (or two) and the inherent hassles that come with a cable ‘technician’ visit (mine went well, but many apparently don’t) and 2) Tivo has ads that don’t get in the way of the functionality (you don’t have to watch them) but which still annoys me. The first con is not Tivo’s ‘fault’ – the second is, and is why I don’t give the product a 5-star.