My Cart - British television viewers may finally be able to get their hands on a TiVo service before the end of 2010. While our counterparts in the USA were the first to experience the hard-drive recording technology of the TiVo box way back in 1999, the box was available for a limited period in the UK and services withdrawn within eighteen months of a lack-lustre launch. Now Virgin Media have struck a deal and they’re dropping heavy hints that this could be the next leap forward in TV receiver technology.
TiVo produced the first set-top box to contain a computer hard drive which could digitally record programs for later viewing, allowed live TV to be paused for a telephone call and facilitated the one click automatic recording of an entire television series. Ten years later, cheap LCD TVs and hard drive recorders are easy and cheap to come by, but off-the-shelf units often suffer from reliability issues, making the viewing experience frustrating. Sky Plus and BT Vision currently offer a digital recording box with their television services and will certainly be taking a keen interest in Virgin Media’s new offer.
Virgin’s TiVo box is likely to be quietly launched before Christmas 2010, with a bigger fanfare to come in 2011. At that point new customers to Virgin will receive the TiVo box as part of their standard installation, while existing, top-package customers may choose to upgrade. The box will incorporate a massive 1 terabyte of data storage and
The crucial difference between Virgin’s TiVo and other recording set-top boxes in the inclusion of a dedicated modem. With this component included as standard, the download of television content will have little or no effect on the household’s other broadband activities. Also, through the use of Virgin’s high speed fibre optic cable network, the box will have no need to reserve storage space for the supplier’s content and information, leaving the full storage at the viewer’s disposal. While specifications have been strangely lacking, Virgin are promising a service second-to-none that will allow viewers access to the best of live TV, catch up and on demand.
