Time Warner Runs Out Of HD DVRs
NewsChannel 9 in Syracuse (New York) posted a story that said Time Warner had no more HD DVR boxes for customers. Apparently, there’s a shortage of HD DVRs because the company that makes the boxes have been “overwhelmed by requests for them”. Time Warner says that new boxes should arrive in two to three weeks.
NewsChannel 9 says that customers can still watch TV shows–like the upcoming Super Bowl–in HD because they have “plenty of regular high-definition boxes, without the DVR capabilities.”
I believe there are four reasons for this: 1) Super Bowl Sunday 2) a deluge of new HDTV sets purchased during the the holiday season, 3) the increasing popularity of DVRs and 4) the high price of the Tivo Series 3 HD DVR.
Customers that have a choice of HD cable boxes, prefer those with a DVR. That makes sense. Why not upgrade to a DVR after shelling out over $1,000 on a fancy new HDTV?
But buying a Tivo Series 3 for $800 (plus additional monthly fees) is out of the question.
So people want a Tivo but settle for their cable or satellite HD DVR. Something’s gotta give!
Bonus Story: The MercuryNews.com’s Action Line investigative report says readers are frustrated by Comcast’s DVR.
Bonus Story #2: TV Predictions wrote a story that North Carolina Time Warner is running out of HD cable tuners. The story didn’t mention DVRs, however.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:06 am
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January 26th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Interesting - last Saturday I went to the TWC location on 23rd st. in Manhattan and specifically requested a non-DVR HD box, but was told that they only had HD-DVR boxes in stock. Maybe they’re out of everything now?
January 26th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Well, it seems that it’s a local thing, not every single Time Warner company is having this problem. Syracuse was where this was first reported.
Makes sense to ask your cable/satellite provider about this. With so many HD DVR machines not working correctly, lots of people are going through these machines.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Of course, another reason might be because Time Warner / Bright House have just disabled the VCR Commander feature on their cable boxes…
http://www.awtrey.com/brighthouse-extortion/
Tony
January 26th, 2007 at 8:58 am
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January 26th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Tivo S3 is $649 at Amazon, not $800 as stated in the article. Also, you can get the monthly service for as little as $8.31/month if you sign up for 3 years. That’s way cheaper than the monthly fee from cable, and Tivo is simply a much better service. Wait until the HD DVR from your cable company drops shows, or gives you the Blue Screen of Death, and you’ll understand that Tivo is not a bad deal. Comparing Tivo to cable DVRs is like comparing good, clean oats to oats that have already been through a horse.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:22 am
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January 26th, 2007 at 9:53 am
A TiVo series 3 is $800 at Best Buy. Since there’s no time left between now and the super bowl to order one from Amazon and have it arrive in time, where do you think people are going to have to go in order to buy one? It’s either Best Buy or Circuit City (I’m sure they both have them for similar prices).
The DVR service through Time Warner only costs (I think, don’t have my bill in front of me) $10/month at the most. So the TiVo isn’t “way cheaper”. It’s $2/month cheaper and that’s only if you sign a 3 year contract. TW doesn’t require any contracts to be signed for the DVR.
The advantage to the TW DVR is that I don’t have to buy the $800 (or even $650 from Amazon) TiVo box. The only thing the TiVo will do for me is figure out what I like to watch and record even more programs that I probably don’t care to see anyway. The TW DVR can pause live TV, record a series, and record single programs, just like a TiVo. The ONLY thing a TiVo might do better (and I have no way of testing this) is to record a program on time no matter when it starts. Right now, if you don’t want to miss any part of a program, you usually have to set the DVR to 1 min before and 1 min after the program. That isn’t hard to do and only has to be done once for a series.
I’ve only ever had my DVR “drop a show” twice (if by drop a show you mean doesn’t record it). The first time I don’t know why it did it, but the second time was because I was messing with the programming as the shows started. And I don’t believe the TW DVR runs Windows, so it’s never “BSOD” on us.
We’ve owned our DVR for 4 or 5 months and we love it. I think I actually watch more tv now than I did before, but I watch it on my schedule, not the tv shows schedules. It’s wonderful since I have a newborn to take care of now.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Yeah!!! Just in time! My Time Warner DVR managed to implode on itself tonight. Thanks for the info though!