SkyCable demos TiVo-style PVR System

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?

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 996 other subscribers
Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

20 Responses

  1. Avatar for Paul Pastrana Paul Pastrana says:

    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.

  2. Avatar for pekpek pekpek says:

    anong petsa na???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wala pa ring PVR!!!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Avatar for aligue aligue says:

    yes, mag end na february. we are all excited with this PVR. delay ba commercial launching? aabot pa ba to ng second, third or 4th quarter?

  4. Avatar for alal alal says:

    sabi 1st quarter 2011, halllerrr february nah…

    ang tagal namannnn

  5. Avatar for Jason Jason says:

    This post may have been plagiarized

    check: http://ping.fm/L46vZ

  6. Avatar for Tuba Joe Tuba Joe says:

    Ha. Ha. Ha.

    Sky Cable’s Joke Box (i.e. Digibox) doesn’t even work in several areas in Manila (for reasons like weak signal etc, no coverage etc) so more of a PVR and what is the use of having a PVR.

  7. Avatar for aligue aligue says:

    PVR will also be available for standard definition programming/subscription according to SKAYCABLE.

  8. Avatar for Aldo Aldo says:

    …and to add, sana wag talaga maging mataas ang price kase 1 tv 1 box na to malamang. This will be one of their way to control yung mga old splitter types.

    magine, 1 house hold can possibly have 3 tv sets.

  9. Avatar for Aldo Aldo says:

    Wow Tivo in the Philippines though late na. Thats a good step forward since most movie subscription service is not yet available in the Philippines. How do we expect Google TV and the likes to be a hit here if naka block naman tayo sa Hulu, netflix etc.. Yes there are work arounds but Im tired of it.

    Sana maging mura lang ito and maging expandable ang memory hehehe.

    I think if this becomes successful SkyCable can be our gateway to Internet TV.

  10. Avatar for Jason Jason says:

    I think SkyCable isn’t really trying to follow ATT U-Verse since most pay-tv providers in the US already has the PVR service. What SkyCable is trying to do is bring the PVR technology in the Philippines and I do hope it will be affordable for an average, working-class Filipino. =)

    With SkyCable’s PVR service, TiVO will not be far away as well. Taiwan already has the TiVO service why not bring it to the Philippines then.

  11. Avatar for kamote kamote says:

    Wow! Talagang sinusundan nila yapak ng AT&T U-Verse!!

  12. Avatar for Febbe Febbe says:

    Yay! mukhang promising..

  13. Avatar for Febbe Febbe says:

    Yay magkakaTIVO na sa dito.

  14. Avatar for nexusboy nexusboy says:

    people spend for internet subscription, not so with cable. if that TIVO thing in Skycable will make monthly expenses for cable go higher, majority will not embrace this.

  15. Avatar for mr. bogus mr. bogus says:

    cable is dying!!!!!!!!

    watching in cable channel in the internet is IN!!

    or buy satellite dish in quiapo… wala pang monthy fee :-)

  16. Avatar for kesterbt kesterbt says:

    Sabi sa akin nung tumawag ako sa Sky hotline kailangan magbayad ng P3,000 for this device tapos ibabalik mo na sa kanila yung Digibox. And yung P299 yun yata yung monthly fee para sa HD package nila . =)

  17. Avatar for jay jay says:

    199 is just fine. i wish
    i think i already have this similar set up using my elgato 250 for my mac, i can pause while at the same time recording the program. I can also do instant replays

  18. Avatar for paul paul says:

    probably still much cheaper to “visit” quiapo. ;-)

  19. Avatar for Carlo Carlo says:

    I bet it’ll be expensive, and needs HDsubscription. :-(

  20. Avatar for Dante Dante says:

    199 is a good bargain… ^_^

Leave a Reply
JOIN OUR TELEGRAM DISCUSSION

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *