I have a four-year-old TiVo that I’ve upgraded with a big hard drive so it has a capacity of several hundred hours. I have an HDTV-ready TV, but haven’t ordered an HDTV box from Cox Cable yet. Yeah, HDTV looks fabulous, but it’s worthless to me without a personal video recorder. I don’t want to be a slave to the TV.
That’s why announcements like these are so frustrating:
Hauppauge Computer Works: WinTV-PVR-500MCE
Watch one channel while recording another with the WinTV-PVR-500MCE and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. WinTV-PVR-500MCE contains two complete TV tuners, each with their own hardware MPEG encoder!
Cool! Two TV tuners and a PVR. But no HDTV.
.:: Niveus Media, Inc ::. Imagine, Design, Create
Niveus Media, Inc., manufacturer of media entertainment devices for the high-end audio/video market, today announced their 2005 Denali Edition Media Center offering, featuring Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 software from Microsoft.
“Customers have been asking for high-definition support in Media Center Edition PCs since their inception,” said Kevin Unangst, director of Windows consumer marketing for Microsoft Corp. “We are pleased that Niveus will work with the Media Center Edition 2005 to meet consumer demand by offering its A/V form factor Denali Media Center with support for high-definition television broadcasts.”
It’s gorgeous (and no doubt very very expensive). But no PVR. So why should I bother.
Dear consumer electronics industry: Please wake me up when you get a high-capacity HDTV PVR. I know you’re working on it. I can’t wait. (And no, DirecTV with TiVo doesn’t count. I don’t want to switch to satellite and lock myself in to one source of input.)
(Via Engadget)
Ed Bott 