Tivo running on Motorola boxes soon

A little birdie (in the know) told me last week that TiVo's port onto the Motorola 6412 is finally getting closer. This is the box that comcast uses to deliver their HD DVR service.

And the best part is that New England is going to get the Tivo upgrade first. Wahooo! It will be an optional service that subscribers can choose over the default DVR service.

I can't wait. I'm a big fan of Comcast (cable modem rocks, HD is stunning and we enjoy their VOD) but the current DVR software has problems. The ads in the guide are clunky and the software locks up or sometimes just doesn't work at all. And Tivo's search feature and season pass are light years ahead of the software in the Motorola box.

I was traveling last week and Lauren had more problems with the Motorola box. Here's the voicemail I received (transcribed by Simulscribe) from her.

I think Comcast is going to be very successful with the Tivo HD DVR product. And there is a ton of pent up demand.

Tivo HD DVR combined with VOD should be awesome.

Comments

[Matt]

Just wondering how soon is soon? I had heard April but the month is already 1/2 over. Any thoughts on the premium Comcast is going to charge? My guess is $3.

[Todd Vernon]

Bijan,

I'm really interested to see how this plays out. I had the comcast box for a while (see: http://falseprecision.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/fpwe_renamed_ou.html)
and my analysis was the while the software was horrible, I think the real problem is the hardware. If yours was like mine it runs the temperature of the sun, always a bad sign. I moved on to the Tivo S3 which runs cool and works perfectly..

[Erik Schwartz]

This will get me to give up my DirectTV.

Kind of too bad really, I just upgraded my old Tivo DSR6000 with a big hard drive, but it's SD and still a series 1 and DirectTV isn't going to do any favors for Tivo these days.