Announced back in December, SkyCable finally launched their DigiBox iRecorder today following a TiVo-like set-up that compliments your cable subscription.
SkyCable’s Digibox iRecorder is a personal video recorder (PVR) that records up to 2 TV shows at the same time and still allow you to watch another 3rd channel as well.
Recording option can be on-the-fly or scheduled regularly so you will never have to miss another episode of your favorite TV show ever again. See full press release below.
The device is hooked up to your TV via an HDMI cable. It comes with a built-in 320GB hard disk drive that can store up to 86 hours of HD videos or 145 hours of standard definition videos. Of course, the set-up comes with additional monthly service fee of Php399 (not bad!) on top of your regular cable subscription.
TiVO in the Philippines.. not really, it’s too good to be true. I am a Skycable subscriber, yes it does record programs but you have to tune in to that channel for it to be recorded. An example would be, I wanted to watch a movie in Fox Movies Premium HD, it’s called Life of Pi. While it’s still on the credits of the previous movie, I browsed the EPG guide of Nat Geo Channel HD, something called Brain Games. So I clicked REC on it, thinking it would record Brain Games at the same time of I watching the Life of Pi. Then after a moment, it said to me about something that I should tune in to Nat Geo for it to record or else it won’t.. Silly recording feature. Would be useful if your outside and you left your Digibox to do it’s thing, but when your watching a show. Not useful at all.
Second, that promised “PAUSED, REWIND, FORWARD” feature somehow lets you think that it works like when you miss a show an hour before, you can put it back and watch it again. No, you are thinking it all wrong. First of all, that pause do actually work. But for one reason it transports you to a different interface, like a video player instead of your actual live broadcast. Rewind feature only works when you paused something, it stays that way until you exit the interface. For example, you are watching Walking Dead and you pause right where the zombies is about to get the main character. On it’s pause position, you play it and you see that the rewind feature only puts you back to where you pause it. Forward is when you are rewinding it back. TiVo is different, it’s like time machine..you can go back to the previous show if you wanted. Also, to the recording, it stutters alot really maybe simple stutter of the audio. But picture is okay.
Third, this IRECORD FEATURE won’t work if you don’t have an external HDD or usb.. everything from recording, pause, rewind and forward. I informed my csr about it, they said it’s not included in the digibox.
So this won’t even be close to the TiVo experience at all.. they need to fix it.