TiVo Unveils New DVR Design That Supports HDTV

Jan. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo today announced it has developed the first DVR platform that supports recording in High Definition Television formats. The reference design will be licensed to leading CE manufacturers who are expected to offer the new DVR to consumers by the end of the year. In a related announcement, today DIRECTV and TiVo announced they would develop a new DIRECTV HDTV Digital Video Recorder with TiVo.

The new design offers viewers the flexibility of a DVR that is equipped to record today's analog broadcasts along with the capability for recording the rapidly expanding programming offerings in HDTV. The company said the HDTV format DVR is one of the new products most frequently requested by technology licensing partners as well as TiVo subscribers.

"HDTV has arrived and our consumer electronics partners have been eager to incorporate a TiVo HDTV DVR into their digital receivers," said Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo. "This is an important step in DVR technology that will give our licensing partners the ability to offer their consumers an HDTV platform DVR with the TiVo service before the end of the year."

The TiVo HDTV reference design will offer all the same unique recording and viewing features currently available for the TiVo Series2 and will also support all high-definition formats, including 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. The source of the HDTV signal may be ATSC terrestrial HD broadcasts or satellite HD broadcast. The platform will also be capable of encoding a standard definition analog signal from terrestrial antenna, cable or satellite, identical to current generation TiVo platform functionality.

HDTV offers significantly improved audio and picture quality over analog broadcasts. The rich TiVo user interface and program guide provides a consistent way to search and recorder either analog or digital broadcasts, significantly improving upon the basic program information delivered with the broadcast.

This new TiVo will also offer HDTV viewers all the viewer friendly features that are standard on the TiVo Series2, including Pause Live TV, Season Pass, for easily recording an entire season of favorite shows, and WishList, which lets TiVo find and record shows viewers love.

Source: TiVo, Inc.