TiVo Unveils Series 3 HDTV DVR

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TiVo Unveils Series 3 HDTV DVR

James Joyner | Friday, January 6, 2006

Slashdot passes on word that TiVo has unveiled its Series 3 DVR, which is HDTV and digital cable ready. It is due out “mid-to-late 2006.”

TiVo Lovers’ zonereyrie provides some technical details and photos.

The unit has two CableCARD slots on the back and it will support Multi-Stream (CableCARD 2.0) or Single-Stream (CableCARD 1.0) cards. If you have multi-stream then you only need one card, but as long as only single stream cards are available you can use two of them. Yes, the unit is dual-tuner – actually, like the HD DirecTiVo it can use any two of the tuners it has, and it has six. 2 cable tuners, 2 ATSC tuners, and 2 NTSC tuners. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA.

The only inputs the unit has are a coax cable in and a coax antenna in. There are no RCA or S-Video inputs on this unit. For output it has HDMI, Component Video, S-Video, and Composite Video. It has optical digital audio out, as well as RCA stereo out. Like the Series2 units it has 2 USB ports, and it also has a 10/100baseT Ethernet jack built-in. The unit also still has the modem, which seems increasingly archaic. :-) Oh, yeah, I almost forgot – it also has an external SATA port. ;-)

We’ve currently got a Series 1 and a Series 2 TiVo set up. Our biggest obstacle right now is DirecTV, our content provider, doesn’t yet offer enough HDTV to make the transition worthwhile.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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