Earlier this week, SkyCable announced they will be offering a “TiVo box” style unit into their system to complement the HD programming they provide to customers.
The PVR (personal video recorder) give you the ability to pause live TV, instantly replay scenes just watched
while continuing to record.
In short, this is our very own local version of the popular TiVo service in the US.
The PVR comes in a box installed along the cable connection. It is supposed to have a built-in HDD but we’re not told how much the capacity is.
Reps from SkyCable could not say how much this service is going to be once it is commercially released on first quarter of next year. Hopefully, the monthly rent of the PVR isn’t more than your cable subscription.
How about we give SkyCable some suggestions? How much should the monthly rent of the PVR be? What’s a tolerable price for you — Php199, Php249, Php299? More? Less?
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.