Dish Network have confirmed that their DTVPal DVR will be available to pre-order from next week, with deliveries of the personal video recorder beginning in December. The unit includes an Over The Air (OTA) analog and digital TV tuner with an unspecified recording capacity and 720p/1080i outputs.
Setting up a computer-based media center can be a matter of picking one off the shelf of your nearest Best Buy, or spending days building your own DIY version. But if you’d rather stick with the PC you already have, the Hauppauge HD PVR Model 1212 could be the device for you. Capable of recording high-definition content, without DRM, it’s a compact USB box with a great cluster of ports; Gear Diary have been testing it out.
Could the new MacBook rumor, that everyone has been getting so worked up over, actually be about a completely different device? That’s one theory: that Apple are preparing to make yet another assault on the living room in the shape of a new Apple TV. According to GigaOM, a new – probably PVR-equipped and media streaming – Apple TV would enable the company to push back against TiVo and Slingbox while further taking advantage of their iTunes distribution partnerships with major networks.
If I were to list one basic feature I’ve always wanted for my TIVO is an integrate User Interface with Picture in Guide (PIG). Little has changed with its interface over the years, picture is obstructed by grid-style onscreen guide while navigating though user menu to retrieve list of recording show or change settings. Competitors such as DirectTV, Dish Network and Cable service carriers have long offering DVR with PIG. That soon to change; Tivo is cooking up a user interface with a complete new look- Featuring PIG with ability to display picture while peruse user guide.
Neuros has begun shipping their high definition Neuros OSD 2.0 developer kits, an open-source DVR based on Texas Instruments’ DaVinci DM 6446 chipset. Comprising all the basic hardware a developer might need to begin coding for the multiformat set-top box, the OSD 2.0 HD includes two composite and one component inputs, together with composite, component and HDMI outputs, and a total of four USB ports.
AT&T has unveiled the latest update to their U-verse IP system, Total Home DVR. The system will allow the playback of recorded content – in standard and high-definition – not only on a U-verse DVR but up to seven connected TVs. Playback can follow viewers around the house, pausing on one screen and resuming it on another, or alternatively multiple, independent viewings can be watched on separate TVs.
Check out the demonstration videos of U-verse Total Home DVR after the cut
Sony’s PlayTV has almost begun to reach the hands of European gamers, and Stuff.TV is one of the first to have their opinions up. The dual-tuner add-on to the PS3 has suffered many delays and, more ominously, a couple of significant feature cuts since it was first announced a year ago: both the ability to transfer recordings to PSP, PC or MemoryStick, and the ability to record OTA HD channels.
Anyone with a Digital Video Recorder is probably not a stranger to running out of storage space and being forced to delete old programs. What you may not be aware of is that there are a few products out there claiming to make expanding that storage straightforward: essentially a plug-n-play external hard drive to add capacity to your DVR. The Apricorn DVR Xpander and Western Digital My DVR Expander are two such examples, and here we have a new kid in town, the Iomega DVR Expander.
Sony’s European arm has confirmed that the PlayTV free-to-air digital TV tuner and PVR add-on for the PS3 will launch in the UK on September 10th. SCEE president David Reeves told Eurogamer that the European launch would run “from September to December” and the PlayTV, in a change to the known specifications, will allow users to record programmes while simultaneously gaming.
TiVo recently began rolling out its Summer (9.4) software update to its PVR subscribers and, while the company initially kept quiet about it, they have included YouTube video playback. Available to Series 3 and TiVo HD users, the functionality will begin to show up as early as July 18th but it will take 2-3 weeks before all boxes have been updated.
Check out the video of YouTube on TiVo after the cut
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